Chitauri Apocalypse
by Del Rion
Summary: Iron Man never fell back through the portal. The Avengers must deal with the loss of their comrade and move on – until Earth once again comes under an attack from the Chitauri and their new-found weapons that decimate everything in their path with unmatched power and intellect... [rest of the summary in fic info]
1. Story Info

**Story Info**

**Title:** Chitauri Apocalypse

**Author:** Del Rion

**Fandom:** The Avengers (MCU)

**Era:** Post-Avengers movie

**Genre:** Action, drama

**Rating:** M / FRM

**Characters:** Bruce Banner (Hulk), Clint Barton (Hawkeye), Jane Foster, Nick Fury, Happy Hogan, J.A.R.V.I.S., Loki, Pepper Potts, James "Rhodey" Rhodes (War Machine), Steve Rogers (Captain America), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Lady Sif and the Warriors Three (Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg), Tony Stark (Iron Man), Thor  
(Brief/smaller appearances: Odin, Maria Hill, Darcy Lewis, The Other, Benjamin "Benny" Pollack, Erik Selvig, Jasper Sitwell, Claire Wise.)

**Pairings:** Happy/Pepper, Jane/Thor. Mentions of: Benny/Claire, Pepper/Tony

**Summary:** Iron Man never fell back through the portal. The Avengers must deal with the loss of their comrade and move on – until Earth once again comes under an attack from the Chitauri and their new-found weapons that decimate everything in their way (path) with unmatched power and intellect. As cities and nations collapse around their decreasing resistance, the heroes of Earth must find a way to defeat their enemy before there is nothing left to avenge.  
Complete.

**Written for:** _Apocalypse Big Bang_, Round One (apocalypsebang at LiveJournal)

**Art:** Imaan (insteadofdeath at dA/DW/LJ)

**Warnings:** Graphic description of torture, major character death, apocalypse & invasion themes (including but not limited to: mass destruction, terrorism, holocaust, death, violence and gore), brain-washing & mind-control, language (including some remarks that could be seen as racist). Serious spoilers for the ending of _The Avengers_ (and other random spoilers for the rest of the movies in the Avengers cinematic universe).

**Disclaimer:** Iron Man and Avengers, their characters and everything else belong to Marvel. The movie versions belong to Marvel Studios, Joss Whedon, Jon Favreau, Louis Leterrier, Kenneth Branagh, Joe Johnston, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures… in short: everyone but me. This is pure fiction, created to entertain likeminded fans, no profit made.

**Beta:** Mythra

**Feedback:** Appreciated, cherished and loved. Concrit welcome.

* * *

**About ****_Chitauri Apocalypse_****:** The idea for this story was partially formed in response to the end of the battle in _The Avengers_ movie, Falling Skies TV show, the fact that I loved the 1998 _Godzilla_ film – plus I can't resist liking certain aspects of _Neon Genesis Evangelion_… (How are the last three involved in this story? You'll soon find out as you read on.)

The idea also conveniently matched the criteria for the **Apocalypse Big Bang**, so it got written way earlier than it otherwise may have been.

I'm a fan of apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic plots. I've written something along those lines in the Heroes fandom (especially my "Broken World" series), and putting superheroes like the Avengers through something like that is alluring because what do they do when they can't beat the enemy in one battle – or a dozen?

I would also like to confess right here and now that I'm no expert in biology OR nuclear power. I tried to hunt for some facts to back up my theories but mostly I'm just tossing fake!facts into the air and hoping they'll stick long enough to make the story believable.

Also, for those not familiar with the particular Marvel one-shot (seen on _The Avengers_ Blu-ray), Benjamin "Benny" Pollack, Claire Wise and Agent Blake appear in "_Item 47_".

* * *

**Chapters and statuses:** Below you see the writing process of the story's chapters. If there is no text after the chapter's title, then it is finished and checked. Possible updates shall be marked after the title.

**Chapter 1: End of the Beginning**  
**Chapter 2: Genesis – Avengers**  
**Chapter 3: Genesis – Stark Industries**  
**Chapter 4: Genesis – S.H.I.E.L.D. **  
**Chapter 5: Impending Attack **  
**Chapter 6: Touchdown**  
**Chapter 7: Assessments of Defeat**  
**Chapter 8: Succor**  
**Chapter 9: Rise and Fall**  
**Chapter 10: Rescue**  
**Chapter 11: The Return of J.A.R.V.I.S. **  
**Chapter 12: Taste of Irony**  
**Chapter 13: Questions**  
**Chapter 14: Malibu**  
**Chapter 15: Revelation**  
**Chapter 16: Perfume**  
**Chapter 17: Genesis – The Fall of Tony Stark**  
**Chapter 18: Genesis – Creating the Armageddon**  
**Chapter 19: Clash**  
**Chapter 20: No Man Left Behind**  
**Chapter 21: Capture**  
**Chapter 22: Trickster**  
**Chapter 23: Conviction**  
**Chapter 24: Empty Grave**  
**Chapter 25: Reluctance and Loss**  
**Chapter 26: Trust**  
**Chapter 27: Edwin**  
**Chapter 28: The Weapon**  
**Chapter 29: Iron Man Returns**  
**Chapter 30: Epilogue**


	2. Chapter 1: End of the Beginning

Written for **Apocalypse Big Bang, Round 1** (apocalypsebang at LiveJournal).

* * *

**Chapter 1: End of the Beginning**

* * *

_"I can close it. Can anyone copy? I can shut the portal down!"_

"Do it!"

_"No, wait!"_

"Stark, these things are still coming."

_"I have a nuke coming in. It's gonna blow in less than a minute. And I know just where to put it…"_

"Stark, you know that's a one-way trip."

The roar of repulsors cut through the air above them as Iron Man guided the nuke up along the side of the Stark Tower – and right into the waiting portal which was tearing a hole in the sky above it.

As the seconds ticked by they waited, dreading and hoping, then saw the glimpse of a detonation as the Chitauri began to fall all around them as if someone had sucked the very life out of them. It wasn't what Steve had been expecting but he took it in stride, not questioning their good luck; whatever Stark had done up there had worked.

Again they waited, staring up, searching the portal, watching the small flicker of light grow as the mothership on the other side was consumed by the explosion.

_"Come on, Stark,"_ he heard Natasha mutter, the comm signal still open between the team. She said what they all thought, yet he knew they couldn't wait forever; the blast and the possibly remaining Chitauri had to be contained on the other side, and there was no way of knowing whether Stark had made it.

He was aware of Thor beside him and that the Asgardian knew as well as he that the portal had to be closed. If Stark were able, he would have already flown back. He had known the risks.

"Close it," Steve ordered, yet the words barely left his throat, coming out strained.

Natasha didn't hesitate; she used whatever means she had discovered and shut the portal, the hole in the sky shrinking, drawing back in on itself, and try as he might he couldn't find a red-and-gold shape emerging from its folds.

Quite suddenly the sky was clear again, the portal gone – and Iron Man with it.

_to be continued…_


	3. Chapter 2: Genesis – Avengers

**Chapter 2: Genesis - Avengers**

* * *

It was that time of year again when he got restless, no matter where he was, and steadily made his way back to Malibu.

The proper _in memoriam_ ceremony was held in New York City, to honor the fallen heroes and victims of the Tesseract Event, yet Bruce wanted no part in that. He had gone once, on the one-year anniversary, but making his way across country afterwards, to be where they all should have been, had taken him precious time; he couldn't move on with his life before coming here, to the quiet corner of the cemetery where Tony's grave was.

They were honoring him in New York, of course, with speeches and donations. Pepper Potts would be there, on behalf of Stark Industries, which meant the actual burial site would be quiet, at least for a day.

Bruce liked the solitude and the feeling that he might just avoid detection this time… yet that hope was crushed when he heard footsteps coming up the path. It had been a year since they'd seen each other but he knew it was Steve even without looking.

The footsteps stopped beside him on the well-maintained grass. Silence grew heavy between them, as always. Bruce knew what Steve had to be thinking – what most of them had thought during the four years after their first battle together.

"They say he died a hero," Steve started after a while.

"He did," Bruce agreed.

Silence, again, until Steve spoke up: "Do you ever think he died in vain?"

Bruce squared his jaw and traced the letters on the headstone. They haunted him in his dreams but it gave him comfort to see them in person – to be able to touch them. Comfort and regret… "We'll never know," he finally managed to force out in reply. What he remembered of the battle… it was nothing like the aftermath. Coming back from his transformation to the other guy and realizing Tony was gone.

It was nothing compared to what Steve felt; Bruce knew the man blamed himself, doubted his actions every single day. Steve kept asking himself if they should have waited a bit longer; if there had been another way to stop the nuclear missile; if he could have done himself what Tony did.

"We just stood by and watched," Steve finally forced himself to go on, his eyes closing with a brief expression of pain. "All I knew of him was that he made me angrier than anyone ever had… but he threw his life on the line for all of us without being asked."

"He didn't do it because of what you said to him on the Helicarrier." It wasn't the first time they'd talked about this; not the first time people had tried to talk Steve out of his gnawing guilt. Bruce had assumed the pain would lessen with time but just as surely as Bruce migrated back to Tony's grave each year, Steve found him there every time and the pain in his eyes remained.

Steve let out a small, pained chuckle. "I keep going over it in my head. Wondering…"

Bruce could tell him to just let it go, to accept that no matter what they would have said or done at the time, it wouldn't have saved Tony. That the person Steve made himself remember was probably as far from Tony's true being as his first impression had been. Neither of those things would help him to cope, to deal with the loss, so he let those final words hang between them as they stood there in the middle of the quiet cemetery, wondering if perhaps they could have done something differently.

That if they had waited just a bit longer…

"Are you leaving again?" Steve asked when clouds covered the sun, reminding them of the passing of time.

"Yes," Bruce nodded. "I need to keep moving." Away from S.H.I.E.L.D. and other interested parties. He had no illusion he was truly lost to all of them but he could try; to make it more difficult for them to track him.

"You could stay," Steve reminded him. He did that every year – every time they met here.

"I cannot," was Bruce's never-changing reply.

"He would have made you stay," Steve noted.

Bruce simply nodded, knowing it to be true.

Tony was gone, though, and there was no place for Bruce here.

_to be continued…_


	4. Chapter 3: Genesis – Stark Industries

**Chapter 3: Genesis – Stark Industries**

* * *

The small TV screen on the wall of the private jet reported the day's events, sound muted; professionals would be hashing out the events that shook the entire nation into awareness that there were aliens – and heroes. There was a concert slated for later that evening, with high-profile performers dedicating their time and attention to those who had lost so much, yet Pepper had not stayed for it this year. She had already seen it all, heard it all, and gave the same speech each year.

After all, how many ways was there to say that Tony Stark had died a hero, saving Manhattan and perhaps the entire world? That he would be missed and that the world wouldn't be the same without him in it?

The clink of ice in a glass snapped her out of her thoughts as Happy sat down, reaching out to offer her a glass. One of Tony's, filled with one of Tony's favorite drinks that was just as ridiculously potent as it was expensive. When it came to alcohol he'd had good taste.

She accepted the glass, sipped, didn't even grimace. Across from him Happy was having a drink of his own, nursing it in silence. He looked good in a suit, she noted not for the first time, and he looked less pained each year. Perhaps he thought the same of her, yet they both knew it was just appearances – that the pain and loss hadn't gone anywhere and every year reporters from around the world wanted her to smile, to shed a tear, and describe what a wonderful person Tony had been.

"He was a selfish bastard," Rhodey growled from across the aisle. He had had a few too many by now, yet he kept it together through the ceremonies.

Pepper glanced at him, wondering if her agreeing half-nod was all of the truth, or just scraping at the surface.

Yes, Tony had been selfish. He threw away his life without thinking how they would have to pick up the pieces after, how the company would teeter on the edge of oblivion when his brilliance was gone. Sure, they had survived and Stark Industries was still going strong, but that meant that Pepper could no longer blame that on her dead lover.

No, she had to move to more personal ground; that Tony had no regard for those he left behind – those he didn't even get to say goodbye to; those who had no choice in the matter.

She still recalled the moment she had glanced at her phone, afterwards, realizing he had called perhaps just moments before he was gone. What would they have said to each other? Would he have let it slip that he might not be coming back home to her? Most likely not; he would have still made Pepper read it from the screen, to hear it from strangers.

Pepper knew Rhodey took it just as heavily. The man had refused to put on the War Machine armor for months after Tony disappeared – then he went another year barely taking it off, trying to patch the hole Iron Man had left in his wake.

Yes, Tony had been selfish while doing the most selfless act of his life.

"Natasha called," Happy said quietly, looking out the window.

Pepper tensed then forced herself to relax.

"She said… to tell you that she's sorry," the man went on; the man who had been there for her through it all, spending nights when she could not be alone, holding her or just standing in the corner depending on her moods. He had listened and he had talked. He had missed Tony, given a speech at the funeral where they had no body to bury…

Pepper forced her jaw to unclench and threw back the rest of the drink. She was aware that both men were looking at her, to see whether her reaction had changed from last year.

Every year Natasha called. Each year Pepper refused to take it or call back.

She still remembered when the Avengers came, along with Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D., telling her in detail what the news left out. They told her how Tony had died, and why. Regardless of the lives he saved, perhaps the entire planet, it felt like a cold comfort and Pepper wished to yell at them, to scream, to ask why a demigod or a super-soldier was not there to save Tony's life when he most needed them.

Steve Rogers had stepped forward, his expression pained although they had only met for the first time. She had been able to tell he had made the call, being the leader; the man Tony's father had spoken of with such high regard, and with whose name Tony had had such a conflicted past. A man who allowed him to die in space, alone…

Pepper had struck him across the face, hard as she could. He had taken it, with a flinch and acceptance. Perhaps he had wanted more, to compensate for the loss they both felt – yet he had no right to mourn a man he hadn't even known.

She had hated all of them for feeling her pain, for sharing it. Yet none she felt more resentment towards than Natasha Romanoff; she had taken the brunt of Pepper's anger, being the only person who had known Tony prior to the attack. She had lived with them, been there through the whole Hammer incident, and she was actually the one to close the portal.

The spy had never denied it, not once. She had taken it all in stoic silence, a shadow of pain and regret in her eyes but nothing more. Yet every year she called and apologized, and each time Pepper remembered the inadequacy of the Avengers yet again.

"Pepper," Rhodey spoke up. "You should… talk to her. You liked her, right? You were friends."

They had been, even after she was uncovered as a S.H.I.E.L.D. shadow and Tony refused to be in the same room with her. She and Pepper had remained in touch periodically, especially when Tony was being difficult.

Pepper could have promised to try next year, or to think about it. She didn't. There had been enough empty promises in her life.

Rhodey sighed a moment later, absorbed in his drinking once more. He would be sober some time tomorrow, ready to put the armor back on, but for now he wanted to drown himself in the fact that none of them had been there when they were needed by someone they loved.

Happy shifted and Pepper felt his hand on hers, gentle and warm. She wasn't certain if she could take it, today of all days, but when she looked at him he smiled that sad little smile and she felt herself smiling back, even through the tears that pushed to surface again.

A flight attendant walked in a moment later, announcing that they would begin landing soon. Pepper simply nodded, glancing at her phone before putting it into her bag. People knew better than to call her today unless it was an emergency.

The plane landed without a hassle and Happy made sure the car was in place, waiting for them. It was starting to rain and he held an umbrella above her head to cover her from the errant drops. Rhodey followed them to the car and slumped into a corner of the seat while the driver pulled out onto the highway. Happy sat beside her, silent yet solid and comforting, right there should she need him.

When they got to the house the clouds had pulled back and moved on. The ground was still dark as they walked to the main door. Happy opened it, the hall before them silent and cold. Each year it threw her and sometimes she would stand there a moment before willing herself to go in.

It was quiet and dim until Happy switched on the lights. Pepper stood in the middle of the hall, wondering if perhaps this time… but no, there was no sound – hadn't been a sound for years now; after Tony died, J.A.R.V.I.S. had gradually shut down, and in her grief Pepper let it happen. The AI had been Tony's creation, so it was only fitting that J.A.R.V.I.S. died with him. Perhaps that was what the AI wanted, or had been programmed to do. They had never talked about it – or rather, Tony had never talked about it.

The workshop downstairs was sealed off. No one had gone in or out since the night they arrived, after the attack, and Pepper could not bring herself to go down there again. To her the workshop was just as much Tony's grave as the empty hole in the ground with the headstone on top – perhaps even more so.

"Are you hungry?" Happy asked.

"No," Pepper replied, finally taking off her jacket. Rhodey moved in past them and threw himself down on one of the couches, lying there a moment, looking like he may have passed out, then after a while he shifted, sitting forward, head in his hands. Pepper knew he was crying.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. "Let's make some coffee," she decided. "I think we've all drank enough."

Happy just nodded and led the way to the kitchen; Rhodey would straighten himself out soon, the momentary collapse brief yet happening the same way every year: he would drink and sink low, then pick himself up, bottle everything inside and be War Machine for another 364 days before they had to endure this again.

_to be continued…_


	5. Chapter 4: Genesis – SHIELD

**Chapter 4: Genesis – S.H.I.E.L.D.**

* * *

Nick Fury had lost many men over the years. Names without faces, soldiers, agents, friends…

Then he lost Tony Stark and for a moment the Avengers he had brought together with difficulty, risks and the potential for disaster were very close to falling apart.

Even after all the years and numerous missions in between, Fury still remembered the reactions of the team when they were brought back from Manhattan:

Clint Barton had kicked a metal can lying on the floor, quiet and stewing, clearly blaming himself for things he wasn't responsible for. His psychological evaluations kept him off the field for months but eventually Fury allowed him back there to keep all of them sane.

Thor had gripped his hammer in a worn out fashion, his posture not as tall and proud as when he first entered the Helicarrier, a shadow in his eyes revealing the loss he felt as keenly as any human being. He took his brother and the Tesseract home and returned occasionally, always ready to help his human friends in any way he could.

Bruce Banner, who had still been recovering from his battle as the Hulk, had looked confused and was most openly grief-stricken at the fact that their comrade was gone. He ran a week later, disappearing off the radar; he was hard to trace and Fury kept tabs on him when he could, out of necessity.

Steve Rogers had carried his shield like a man who lost the war, shoulders slumped and the heavy weight of the decision hanging on his shoulders, guilt and doubt gnawing at his insides; he had made the call and felt responsible for losing one of his team. He continued to feel that way no matter what consolations people whispered in his ears and it remained a sore spot between him and his future dealings with S.H.I.E.L.D. although he never turned his back on them when they truly needed him.

Last had come Natasha Romanoff, watching them all yet clearly having a difficult time deciding how much emotion to show. She had known Stark the longest; she had infiltrated his company and personal life and although it was a betrayal he had never forgotten, Stark had played it cool during their mission to find the Cube and stop Loki's plans. Fury had heard that she was the one to close the portal in the end, with Doctor Selvig's instructions, and she and Rogers both would carry the brunt of those actions for a long time to come. Perhaps that was why she took some personal time before returning to covert missions around the world, away from ill reminders.

The world had moved on, though. S.H.I.E.L.D. had prevailed, running its operations as before, monitoring the safety of the world, and when they were needed he would call some of the Avengers back to aid them in the most perilous of times. At each such time he feared whether the heroes would pick themselves up for another fight, yet every time they did and prevailed; each time they came back and emerged victorious and that was enough for him. It was all he could ask of them.

There were times, though, when Fury allowed himself to reminisce and wonder – usually with a tall glass of scotch in hand and Pepper Potts on the TV screen, telling the world once again what a great man Tony Stark had been and what a loss it was to go on without him. She didn't speak like a lover, although the emotion was hiding just behind the mask of appropriate sorrow. He knew she felt betrayed, had heard as much from her very lips the day they brought her the news. She had lost the man she loved…

What had Fury lost? A man who constantly stoked his ire, who lived to annoy him – and a man whose brilliance had taken them steps ahead of anyone else and who had, when the time came, given his all to the cause he had never promised to serve.

He had dealt with Stark long enough to predict what had lurked beneath the surface… yet he hadn't thought it would end like that.

Like Rogers and Romanoff, he sometimes entertained the idea that they could have waited, could have stalled, yet Fury knew he would have made the same call to ensure no more enemies slipped through. It honored Stark's choice and sacrifice…

If only it were that simple.

If only it had ended that way.

_to be continued…_

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**A/N:** the story will be updated daily!


	6. Chapter 5: Impending Attack

Let's get this show on the road... for real... ;)

* * *

**Chapter 5: Impending Attack**

* * *

Hurried steps weren't unnatural sounds on S.H.I.E.L.D. premises – nor long, determined strides. Actual running, however, never bode well, making heads rise and eyes follow the possible bearer of ill news.

Fury didn't turn to see the arrival, hearing the boots stop a few feet from him in hesitation, then continue onwards.

"Director Fury," as officer from the communications unit proceeded, "we just got a call from the Russians. Their satellites picked up an image of something they couldn't identify."

Fury turned, his mind already a step ahead; if the Russians had seen something, regardless of their ability to recognize it, for them to notify S.H.I.E.L.D. – least of all to ask for help – was very unusual. The officer held a folder out to him and he opened it, finding a picture that was no doubt of the finest quality, yet against the black background he could at first make out very little. Then he began to recognize a shape in the middle.

"When was this taken?" he asked, eye still on the picture.

"Two days ago. There's another image…"

Fury looked up briefly at not being told that earlier, then flipped a page and there it was, much clearer than the first one. "And the other one?" he demanded.

"This morning, sir. It's… getting closer, and there are others. Our satellites are getting into position to confirm their findings. NASA has been alerted and this has been moved up to highest priority."

Fury studied the image a bit longer. Should he be a man of a lesser security clearance he might have guessed he was looking at some image from the latest science fiction movie. However, he knew this design although they had very little data to go on, seeing as there had been a battle raging at the time…

"Call the Avengers," he called out, knowing Hill would get to it at once. "Get a hold of Dr. Banner if you can." He closed the folder, looking up. His second in command was already passing on the word to assemble the Earth's mightiest heroes, and Fury briefly wondered what their reaction to this would be.

* * *

The bridge was buzzing with life and noises, people running around with notes, files, and tablets in hand, transferring data and coordinating a response to the latest threat. Steve didn't know what it was they had been called in for but it had sounded urgent.

"There hasn't been this much activity since Loki's last visit," Clint said dryly, entering the room beside him. He looked unimpressed but that was just his way of dealing with the upcoming hardships that surely lay in wait.

Natasha was already seated at the table, staring off into the distance. Fury was standing at his post, back turned to them for now, but Steve was certain the Director knew they had arrived.

"I hear he tried calling Bruce in for this as well," Clint went on, taking a seat beside Natasha. Steve took his usual place at the table, glancing at all the empty chairs. It did not do him any good to remember who had vacated which ones of them, but sometimes he couldn't help it. Recalling Bruce standing behind his own chair, nervous yet more in control than any of them might ever be. Tony, ready to plan another way to break into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files… He wondered if they ever would have been friends, the way his father and Steve had been. He liked to think so, yet he would never know.

Tony had trusted him on the field, though, allowing him to call the shots… Had he trusted him to make the right call in the end, too? To stop him from flying into the portal with that nuke – or had that been the right thing to do?

He drew in a careful breath and turned his head to see two men entering. One of them he recognized and he smiled briefly, standing up to shake the older man's hand: "Doctor Selvig, it has been a while."

"I wish we were meeting under better circumstances," the astrophysicist smiled grimly.

"Then you must know something we don't," Clint spoke up.

Erik Selvig gave them all a look then sat down; clearly he wasn't going to divulge their reason for being here and Steve was getting a feeling maybe he didn't want to know.

The younger man who had followed Selvig into the room looked around hesitantly, clearly not used to the idea of sitting at the same table with the Avengers – that happened a lot, Steve had noticed – then picked the seat next to Selvig, uncomfortably fiddling with his suit. Natasha and Clint both looked at him with apparent disinterest although Steve knew they both wondered who he was and why he was attending a meeting with them.

"We're all here, it seems," Fury spoke up and turned towards them, striding over. Dark, opaque walls rose around them, blocking the rest of the bridge and its noises from them. The young man jumped slightly and tried to appear nonchalant when no one else reacted. "Meet Benjamin Pollack," Fury went on, introducing the dark-haired man. "He's from our R&D and was the first person to get one of the abandoned Chitauri weapons to work."

"Hi," the guy smiled nervously at them. "Just call me Benny."

"Mr. Pollack," Steve nodded his head then moved his eyes up to Fury. "Are those weapons why we've been called here?" he asked. He knew a lot of debris had been left lying on the streets of New York City after the battle was over, not all of them originating from Earth, yet even S.H.I.E.L.D. fiddling with the weaponry of some alien race felt risky and unnecessary to him. However, it had not been his place to question it years ago, and clearly it wasn't the case now, either.

"Not exactly," Fury replied as multiple screens appeared on the surface of the table. They showed a series of images from space, Steve could tell that much instantly – and something hovering in the middle.

He leaned closer, narrowing his eyes, trying to make sure he saw what he thought he saw. "Space ships," he finally volunteered his verdict.

"The first images were taken five days ago. By now we have established that they are moving towards us and are not going to move past the planet if they maintain their current course."

"They're coming to Earth?" Natasha frowned.

"Do we know who's coming?" Clint added.

"I hoped you could clarify that," Fury responded, looking at the Avengers and Dr. Selvig, leaning forward against the table. "We had very few reliable sources on the ground while the portal was open above Manhattan. You may have gotten a glimpse of whatever Stark managed to blow up before the portal closed."

There was silence. Steve knew he couldn't be the only one to think back to that moment, those long seconds – minutes – that they waited before they had to close the portal or risk being back to square one. "I don't think any of us got a good look at what lay on the other side of the portal," he finally said. "We were somewhat preoccupied at the time." He couldn't completely erase the edge from his voice.

"What are the odds that this is some revenge cooked up by the Chitauri?" Clint continued after him. "Weren't they from the other edge of the galaxy or something?"

"They were able to open a portal between two points in space," Selvig observed. "I think it's too premature to rule out their means of travel as insufficient to reach us, given the right amount of time."

"The designs seem similar," Benjamin Pollack spoke up suddenly, clearing his throat self-consciously as everyone's eyes turned towards him. "Of what we can see in the images, and what we have studied… It could be of the same origin."

"How likely is it that they are _not_ of the same origin?" Clint challenged. "We haven't exactly had a queue of alien ships awaiting visiting rights to Earth."

"Whoever they are, we must be prepared," Fury cut in then turned to look at Steve. "Do you think you would be able to talk Dr. Banner into returning? We might need him soon."

"Bruce has no desire to be included in this anymore." Steve tried not to sigh. "He did his part."

"If the worst happens, it doesn't matter where he's hiding," Fury responded hotly. "If those ships arrive and attack us, we'll need him back on the team."

Steve nodded; he could see that. "I'll… try to talk to him again."

"Do you know where he is?" Natasha asked. Of course she knew he and Bruce met at least once a year in Malibu; they all knew yet they never said anything or pushed to join them.

"Not right now, but I have a feeling you do," Steve glanced at Fury knowingly.

The Director simply nodded.

Steve could see why Bruce was so leery of coming back, yet if the world was in danger, he knew the man wouldn't keep hiding. He had played the part of a hero once; that wasn't something you turned your back on when you were needed again.

"We'll keep tracking the situation," Fury concluded. "Until we are certain the threat has passed, we're at Level Six."

"Doesn't get much higher than that," Clint muttered as they rose to leave, the walls sliding back.

Natasha agreed nonverbally and the two of them left the bridge without further ado.

"Could I get a copy of those pictures?" Steve asked. It would be good to have something corporeal to show Bruce once he went after him. Fury nodded again and turned back to his screens. Steve guessed he would just wait until they located Bruce and sent him down to meet him. Maybe he should try to come up with some good lines in the meanwhile, seeing as there were a few possible outcomes to his visit and some of them weren't all that pleasant.

* * *

Bruce hadn't gotten far, apparently. He was in Nicaragua when a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane dropped Steve off there and left him to fend for himself with some supplies, money, and a radio to get them to pick him up again – or pick up what was left of him. Steve wasn't really concerned about the latter; he and Bruce were friends, he knew he could trust the guy, but one could never be too sure with the Hulk lurking beneath the surface and Steve knew that if he approached this carelessly, it would get messy very fast.

It was a good thing he wasn't the careless type.

The village was small and remote yet there were enough people that it took Steve a while to find Bruce, who apparently was very good at mingling. It wasn't actually that he found the man but that his target took pity on him.

"You stick out like a sore thumb, Cap," Bruce noted from behind him where Steve had been scanning yet another street to find a familiar face. He turned, finding a humorless smile on Bruce's face. "Fury just doesn't take 'no' for an answer."

"Did he tell you why he tried to call you in?" Steve replied.

Bruce looked around then started walking. Steve followed him to a house and a small room upstairs that seemed to serve as Bruce's current home. "No. I didn't want to know, and he didn't seem excited about saying it over the phone," the scientist mused as he emptied his bag, placing items on a rickety table; some food with labels Steve couldn't read, medical supplies probably not for Bruce himself and a few other random items.

Steve pulled a carefully folded stack of papers from his pocket, handing them over to Bruce. The man met his eyes before taking them, pulling his glasses down to his nose before unfolding the pictures, shuffling through them slowly as if pondering each picture from all the possible angles. "They're coming here," Steve told him once he was certain Bruce had seen each picture at least once. "We're on the clock and if those things are hostiles –"

"So that's the plan: pit us against whatever emerges from those ships?" Bruce raised an eyebrow and threw the pictures to the table next to his purchases.

"We don't stand alone but we have to be ready," Steve insisted.

Bruce turned slightly, his back half-turned to Steve, regarding his small room and the noises outside. Perhaps they were all familiar to him, wherever he went, but Steve felt like neither of them belonged here.

"If it's the Chitauri…" he started, knowing he didn't need to say more; Bruce's shoulders tensed, fingers curling into fists.

"You don't know that," Bruce finally said, voice strained. Perhaps it was just the poor light or his eyes were a bit green when he looked at Steve again.

"They seem to be giving it the benefit of the doubt, but that's the biggest fear," Steve pressed.

Bruce looked away again, drawing a careful breath, unclenching his hands with a visible effort. He leaned forward, against the table, hands set on either side of the pictures. Steve knew what the other man was contemplating – that part of him hoped it was the Chitauri, by some miracle, and that they would all get revenge. It might not bring Tony back but it would allow them to avenge him.

"If it's them, then… we'll see, I guess," Bruce finally replied, standing up, his expressions under control again. "Let's get you some food. I'm sure you're starving."

Steve smiled, knowing it was better to roll with it than keep pestering Bruce about his decision. "I won't say no to that," he admitted and they returned to the street. Bruce weaved effortlessly past people, leading Steve along to a smaller street then to a house that looked no more special than the rest, a small sign hanging outside it.

There were a few tables set in a small room that looked more like someone's own dining area. Bruce took a seat, motioned for Steve to do the same. Then, as a young woman came by Bruce chatted with her for a moment, probably in Spanish, then settled back. "I helped her aunt deliver a baby last week," he told Steve then shrugged, "I get a discount."

A pitcher of water was soon set between them with two glasses and a while later they were presented with food that Steve had never seen before but which was good – plus he was hungry so it didn't matter what the food looked like, or if the taste and texture wasn't something he was used to.

They ate heartily, Steve actually feeling full by the end, even with his metabolism, and he insisted on paying for the food when Bruce started to count some bills he pulled from his pocket. "I'm here on S.H.I.E.L.D. business so it's only fair they pay for it."

Bruce smiled, waiting as Steve counted an appropriate amount of bills on the table then led the way out again.

They passed what had to be a local bar, people sitting outside, playing board games and talking loudly. There was a TV fixed to the wall, the picture a bit shaky at times. As they walked by it the crowd suddenly felt silent and someone increased the volume of the broadcast. Steve didn't really pay attention to it but Bruce stopped in front of him, looking over then walking towards the gathering crowd.

There were murmurs of unrest; Steve could recognize those even in a foreign country. On the screen he could see some kind of news clip, showing an enormous dark hull of a ship in the sky – a space ship because nothing else could possibly look like that. There were several other shots, perhaps from other locations, some of them less clear and grainy. There was also an image of a map, then a feed from the ground, a pillar of smoke rising in the distance.

"They're here," Bruce muttered. "The Chinese launched a missile at the ship. The response, apparently, wiped out an entire city…" His eyes remained fixed to the screen, his face passive yet it was a sign that his brain was working much faster.

"We need to go," Steve said.

Bruce just nodded then turned to continue the way back to his apartment. Steve couldn't help but look up to the sky as they walked, noticing that quite a few people were doing the same, yet there was nothing to be seen but the clouds and the familiar blue skies.

_to be continued…_


	7. Chapter 6: Touchdown

**Chapter 6: Touchdown**

* * *

"Sir, we have counted fourteen ships that have lowered themselves into the atmosphere around the globe."

"Nine more are approaching, sir!"

"The World Security Council is waiting for you," Hill cut in. Her tone was crisp and impatient, betraying some of the concern and weariness everyone felt.

Steve watched as Fury left his post and disappeared into another room. He could only imagine what the World Security Council wanted him to do; these were the people who'd prepared – and tried – to nuke Manhattan to stop an alien invasion – an invasion the scale of which hadn't seemed like much compared to what was going on now.

A cacophony of voices echoed across the bridge. Calls and messages kept coming in, tracking the movement of the alien ships that were now orbiting Earth – and in many cases lowering themselves into the atmosphere. Steve hadn't slept well since Nicaragua and he doubted he would find rest anytime soon, watching the progress and dreading the next step.

After the Chinese fired a missile at one of the ships and got a crater-shaped hole a couple thousand square miles wide as a result, the entire world had been on its toes, waiting for someone to make the next move; there had been no contact from the ships, no demands, threats or information as to why they were here. There had been no sign of what lay inside those ships, either, so they couldn't tell with whom they were dealing. Were they hostile, or was it the attack from China that had provoked them to retaliate?

People walked in and out past him, trading information and progress reports from around the world. He had gotten so used to the hubbub that he didn't even notice when Bruce entered, taking a seat next to him. "Twenty three ships hovering in the stratosphere and we have no idea who they are or what their next move is," the scientist summed up, looking around. It looked like he had a headache and it didn't seem like he had slept much either.

"I'm sure we'll know sooner than we would like," Steve observed.

Bruce nodded. "There are crisis meetings everywhere, between governments, NATO, UN… For now no one has taken another shot at those ships but it's only a matter of time before someone's trigger finger twitches." He observed the screen in front of him, tapping and scrolling for a moment, then switched it off with a flick of his wrist. He slid off his glasses and closed his eyes, a pained expression on his face. "We know they pack enough firepower to potentially destroy whatever we aim at them."

"Some have a theory that if it's the Chitauri, they would have already made their move," Steve mused. He wasn't sure he bought it – and Bruce seemed to agree:

"They attacked us head-on last time – and lost. Maybe they learned their lesson. They've had some time to think about that, and… we have no way of knowing how many of them, whatever they are, are inside those ships. What we do know, though, is that they've spread around the globe, not focusing on one spot, which means we may be looking at a full-scale attack or even an invasion."

It sounded like a bad sci-fi film. Steve had once thought it was surreal that they were fighting aliens. Perhaps this was what he got for being a skeptic.

Another message came from an observatory somewhere in Alaska and agents flashed back and forth delivering it to whoever needed to know about it. Erik Selvig and the young man, Benjamin Pollack, had barely been seen after their first briefing and Steve was certain they were busy figuring this out – and perhaps finding a way for them to fight back. Steve had been a soldier in his time and knew the importance of weapons and gear.

He wouldn't be doing much damage with just his shield and a rifle, although that wouldn't stop him from trying if need be.

Hill barked orders to get some diagnostics and data transferred, then Steve saw a flash on her screen that caused her to fall silent mid-sentence. Her entire posture froze until she snapped out of it and turned around, looking for something, landing her gaze on Steve and Bruce. "It's starting," she said, striding over. "One of the ships has lowered itself down to a couple thousand feet."

"Where?" Steve asked, already getting up, ready to move out. Fury had told them the Avengers would be the first on the scene, if possible.

"In Japan, above the coast of Niigata Prefecture."

"What's over there?" Steve frowned. "Have the Japanese made contact?"

Hill shook her head then barked at another agent: "Inform Director Fury that he needs to return to the bridge." The agent in question ran off without so much as a 'Yes, Ma'am'.

Bruce thought about it for a moment, fingers drumming over his chin, then something seemed to come to him. "Kashiwazaki-Kariwa."

"Ka-what?" Steve had to ask.

"It's the biggest nuclear power plant in the world after going back to full commission in the aftermath of various earthquakes."

"Is there something else in that area?" Hill asked.

"Nothing that pops into my mind," Bruce shrugged.

"So they're here for… what, energy?" Steve wasn't certain whether he wanted to know the answer.

"Agent Hill!" an agent shouted from across the room. "Another ship is lowering its altitude."

"Where?" Hill called back.

"In Canada, near Lake Huron in Ontario," came the reply.

"I have to ask; what's over there?" Steve looked at Bruce.

"Among other things, Bruce Nuclear Generating Station," the scientist smiled grimly. "I assume we're heading that way?"

"You assume correctly, Doctor," Fury's voice carried over the din as he strode towards them, looking just as flustered and irritated as he had been for the past few days. "Call the Avengers together and go to Canada. We'll clear it with the local authorities while you're in the air."

Steve nodded; he didn't need to be told twice. "Assemble," he murmured and turned, Bruce following him. "What do you think they're doing?" Steve asked the other man, needing to know even if it was guess-work at this point.

"Either they are after power or the control over that power…"

"Is that all?" Steve pressed.

Bruce may have looked a little green for a moment. "I think we both know it isn't."

* * *

Clint and Natasha picked them up in the Quinjet.

Thor, unfortunately, was back in Asgard and unable to join them. Steve had assumed he would have returned to Earth by now; Thor had told him that this man called Heimdall could see all that went on in the Nine Realms and would alert him should a need for his return arise. If this wasn't big enough for the God of Thunder to join them, then nothing was.

"Are they doing something other than hovering?" Clint asked about the alien ships as he flew them north-west.

"Not after the two ships came significantly lower than the others," Natasha replied; she was in radio contact with S.H.I.E.L.D., monitoring what went on. "Wait, something's happening in Japan…" She fiddled with some dials then brought an image to a few screens around the aircraft. They watched as the bottom of the alien ship began to open, like flower petals in the morning, then a shape fell out through the gap.

"What the hell is that?" Clint asked, watching as well.

The shape unfolded itself into an almost human-like form, only it was much larger. It fell through the air then hit the ground, hard, landing on its feet and rising to full height. It was hard to tell from the image but Steve guessed it was at least five or six stories tall, with long legs and arms yet not disproportional from the usual human shape.

"It's some kind of robot," Bruce frowned at the screen, leaning closer, changing the settings to zoom in. The machine had begun to walk, its movements strangely graceful – heading directly towards the nuclear facility which loomed ahead.

"It looks like a mix between an Evangelion and Godzilla, only slimmer," Clint commented.

Steve knew only the latter but thought the robot looked too human to be modeled after a giant lizard. Well, that was until the robot reached the nuclear plant; a small army had gathered at the gates, alarmed by the approach of the ship. Tanks and armed vehicles were spread out between the robot and the facility. The machine halted as if surveying the situation, then something sprouted from its behind: a tail. Its entire body shifted slightly forward and then it moved forward again. The tanks got a few pretty good shots in as well as some RPGs, but as the smoke cleared the robot was still moving without a dent in its surface.

The army pushed relentlessly, refusing to budge, and perhaps it was working because the robot stopped, looming over them.

"They're calling in fighters," Natasha spoke up, listening to the radio. "The planes will be within striking distance in one point five minutes."

"I don't think they're gonna survive that long," Clint noted and all of them looked intently at the screens.

Steve narrowed his eyes as the robot's fists clenched. He hadn't even paid attention to see it actually had fingers although they seemed slightly different; more reptilian. Something popped out from each forearm, sliding out past the fist, ending in some kind of blade, almost.

"That can't be good," Bruce murmured.

The mechanical body shifted, the tail rising higher, then it punched down arm first, thrusting the strange blade through one of the tanks with such force it looked like piercing tomatoes with a barbeque stick. The other arm stuck out, cutting through the tank on its left then whirled and dragged the first tank along, sliding it free only so it could carve a path through the remaining military forces. People were running for cover, abandoning their posts in a mad dash to survive.

With the threat dealt with, the robot straightened itself and stepped over the fence protecting the nuclear facility.

"Fighters are less than a minute out," Natasha narrated in a hushed voice.

"Can they hit this thing while it's in the middle of a nuclear facility?" Steve jerked up suddenly, imagining the catastrophe that might follow.

Inside the plant area the robot swung its body, the tail cutting clean through a building. With the top severed off, the robot moved closer, the blades withdrawing back into its arms. It gripped the remnants of the structure, clawed fingers digging in, slowly prying the building apart, exposing equipment and lab areas.

Bruce swore in at least five different languages. "That was the containment building," he finally managed in English.

"It's going to expose the rods!" Clint's tone jumped with alarm.

"They're not here to harvest energy, are they?" Steve asked, leaning back, feeling sick to his stomach. The robot abandoned the building, sparks and smoke filling the air as it moved onto the next. The robot had destroyed most of the second structure when suddenly something slammed into it, turning the air into a fiery inferno, followed quickly by another impact. Missiles. The explosions echoed across the area, covering everything in smoke and fire, making their screens turn to static.

"Did they get it?" Clint asked hopefully.

Natasha brought her hand up to the headphones, listening intently. Her face was blank – too blank. "Multiple explosions," she told the rest of them; clearly there was still some feed from the area, some cameras working, or perhaps some unmanned aerial vehicle. "It's… We're getting a feed from a satellite…" She swore in Russian. "It's still moving, tearing through the reactors. They won't have time to shut any of the cores down and all personnel are either down or unresponsive."

They all sat in silence for the longest while. Natasha looked like she was listening to the chatter on the radio very distantly. After a while she sat up, concern crossing her face. Her eyes moved over to Steve. "The ship above Canada is doing the same maneuver, opening up. The robot emerged and has just landed."

"What are we going to do?" Clint asked, his hands gripping the controls. "If we don't get trampled or caught in an explosion…"

"It's attacking," Natasha said. "Clint, change direction; there's nothing we can do. Fury is asking us to re-route, to… intercept the robot if it moves to another location."

"Does he know what's going on down there?" the archer muttered but slowed their speed to wait for new directions.

"Better than most," Natasha murmured. "Armies are mobilizing. They consider this a declaration of war – extreme terrorism." She listened for a bit longer. "The robot in Japan is moving. No clear damage to it can be seen. It's heading away from the nuclear plant. The fighters are circling to take another shot."

"This means we can expect for the other one to move as well," Bruce decided. "We'll take it down before it reaches a populated area – or worse, another nuclear facility." He was already unbuttoning his shirt, which was a controlled version of planning to unleash the Hulk.

Steve was glad he was on board with that idea because he was certain they couldn't afford to lose the upcoming fight.

* * *

Clint could admit his hands shook slightly as he guided the Quinjet lower. Beneath them on the ground the sleek robot moved steadily eastwards, unaffected by the destruction at Bruce NGS. The Canadian government was busy dealing with the nuclear disaster and the Avengers were, for the time being, on their own. It was possible that was how S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted it, too, because for now everything the military had done had had no effect on this thing.

"Okay, take her down," Steve commanded, pulling his cowl on. His body was tense, eyes hard, no doubt knowing what was at stake. Well, if it was unclear to anyone then they didn't deserve to be handling this.

"It seems there are only minor levels of radiation hanging onto the robot," Bruce announced. He stood there in just his pants, looking naked beside the rest of them but once he let the green part of himself out, it wouldn't matter.

Clint guessed it was good news, everything considered, and took the Quinjet down as close and as quickly as he dared. He didn't want to see those blades reappear and cut them in half while mid-air.

"Another spaceship is moving lower above Europe," Natasha said. "Possibly heading for France. The authorities have been alerted but they're not shutting down their reactors fast enough." She sighed and pushed the earphones away with disdain; Clint could tell she knew what was at stake and that she might be a little scared, too. Scared never helped in a battle, however, so she was working furiously to replace that with something more useful. "We're going to have a global nuclear disaster on our hands if this goes on. These things are moving too quickly for us to respond."

"Then let's slow them down," Steve decided and as soon as they touched down, Clint lowered the ramp and took off after the rest of them.

The thing was huge up close. With one foot it could step on all of them at once and Clint had no delusions that he would survive that. The feet in question had toes, just like it had fingers, yet they were clawed as well, digging into the earth with each step.

"It's ingenious, really," Bruce noted as they moved closer to it although every fiber in Clint's body suggested moving away might be smarter. "The tail works as extra balance, not just a weapon, yet it's retracted right now, perhaps for smoother mobility. Its toes create stability, burrowing into earth, making it less likely for it to fall over like a human body would when unbalanced."

"Will that knowledge help us to stop it?" Steve asked.

"Well, we know it's been designed to stay upright," Bruce noted, stopping, his eyes starting to turn green.

"Then we shall take it down!" Steve decided.

Behind them, Bruce's body swelled with green, joints and bones popping with sickening sounds. It was over soon, though, a roar from the Hulk louder than the robot's thundering steps.

Clint cringed. So much for a stealth approach.

The robot stopped, twisting around to watch them. It had strange eyes, filled with inner light and it seemed to cock its head to the side as it regarded the four of them on the ground, like large insects next to it.

"What's the plan, Cap?" Clint asked.

"Hit it with everything you've got!" Steve commanded then moved forward. Hulk raced past him with a wide grin which forebode destruction all around him.

"That's helpful," Clint quipped then followed the others with Natasha. Right now he doubted whether the two of them could do any good but Clint was willing to play distraction then wait for an opening where one of his arrows could bring this thing down. He had no fear either that the Hulk wouldn't be able to do what the armies had failed to do.

Not wanting to be left waiting, however, Clint attacked the robot first; he chose an arrow and sent it flying, hitting the machine square in the chest, electricity exploding from the arrow. It had been enough to shut down other robots and doomsday machines in the past.

The robot's smooth surface seemed to hang onto the energy and transform it into angry, twisting blue lines which traveled almost faster than the eye could follow. It reminded Clint of a huge plasma globe, only no one was touching it to direct the current – not until Cap's shield went flying through the air and hit the robot just below Clint's arrow. The energy seemed to concentrate there, curling into itself – then shot out in a beam which carved a crater in the ground. Cap barely managed to avoid it by throwing himself aside with half his usual grace.

"Okay," Clint hesitated, his steps slowing slightly. "That didn't work very well."

By that time the Hulk had decided to make an appearance, roaring and jumping up high, clearly aiming for the head. The robot, however, slammed up its arm, fist connecting and the green beast went flying off into the nearby woods, taking down trees.

"It knows what we're trying to do," Natasha murmured. "It keeps seeing our attacks coming."

"So not only is it a very strong, chaos-causing hunk of metal, but it's also smart? That's never good. What happened to the good old days when the bad guys were dumb as a rock?" Clint complained and pulled out another arrow. If the Hulk never even got close enough to land a hit, what were they going to do? Wait for the thing to rust? Maybe it could be a surprise, though…

Cap had moved to another attack, sending his vibranium shield flying, yet it did little but bounce back. _"We need a plan,"_ he stated a moment later through the comm signal.

"We need to find a weak spot," Clint added, "although I can't see any yet."

"It's not attacking us directly, only deflecting," Natasha said from beside him.

"Should we try and piss it off?" Clint mused. "Can you make a robot lose its cool?"

A deafening roar rose as the Hulk came crashing back right then, running across the distance, fists tight, a very angry, serious look on his face; the Hulk liked smashing but didn't much appreciate being smashed in return – plus he had a bit of a thing about 'Hulk is the strongest there is'.

This time the Hulk didn't attack the robot's face, however, but latched onto the offending arm, hanging onto it. The weight of the impact made the robot bend backwards, trying to catch its balance in a very human-like fashion, and Clint took the opportunity to send an arrow flying, hitting the face just beneath the eyes. It didn't cause damage but the sudden pressure of the explosion delivered the final push to send the machine down onto its back.

_"Avengers!"_ Cap called and they all moved in, seeing their chance.

The Hulk was on top of the robot's chest, banging it with huge fists, snarling and growling. Perhaps Bruce had been right in his first assessment that the robot would be defenseless once down.

They should have known not to celebrate early.

"Shit!" Clint exclaimed in frustration as the robot twisted beneath the Hulk's onslaught. An electric current began to form on its body once again. The Hulk roared in pain and annoyance, caught in the middle of it; some of it had to be hurting the rage monster, prickling through skin that could take more punishment than anything Clint had ever seen. The current seemed to intensify, lighting the Hulk from the inside, making him arch back and bellow out in apparent distress – then one giant robot arm came up and swatted the Hulk off its body as if getting rid of an annoying fly.

However, Clint could see there was damage, which meant they just had to get a little closer, hit a little harder –

The robot rolled over to its side then got up to its knees, lifting itself up. A few sparks spat out of its chest where the Hulk had managed to get through.

"Now!" Cap shouted.

If anyone replied, Clint never heard it; a piercing sound vibrated through the air, blocking his ears, freezing his brain in an agony that lasted forever. It felt like his ears would blow from the inside out and all the blood vessels broke beneath his scalp, the pain so intense he couldn't even breathe.

When he came to, he heard someone – Steve – groaning and Natasha was down on the ground beside him. He didn't even remember falling. He saw Steve struggling to his knees then trying to hoist himself up by leaning on his shield, yet soon enough gravity pulled him back down. It was nice to see even the super soldier was affected.

Natasha wasn't much better, not trying to get up for the time being. There was a thin line of blood running from her nose.

Some distance away, where the Hulk had landed, Bruce lay on the ground, unmoving.

"Fuck," Clint finally commented and plopped back down onto his back, then grimaced as he felt the quiver press against his spine.

Although he wouldn't say it, Steve seemed to agree, defeat and pain playing catch on his face. It was hard to say which was winning.

_to be continued…_


	8. Chapter 7: Assessments of Defeat

**Chapter 7: Assessments of Defeat**

* * *

Their first battle had been a sound defeat. Bruce knew they couldn't win every fight, but right now they needed to win a war and had no time to waste; while the Avengers had been recuperating from a rather simple sonic attack which managed to bring them all down effectively, their enemies had not stopped: nuclear facilities and factories had been systematically destroyed all over the world.

There were no bombs. There were no real attacks on the human population. The robots merely seized what humanity had built and took it apart. While civilians were not directly faced with the alien threat, they were subjected to radiation – and after the destruction of many critical factories, a shortage of supplies. Food, electricity, clean water, spare parts… it would all be running out too soon.

Bruce saw a pattern and didn't like it.

"Please tell me there is good news," Fury said as he strode inside followed by Agent Maria Hill.

Bruce glanced up from his notes that he had been making ever since waking up. The battle had been a blur but the Quinjet had recorded most of it and he had accounts from the other Avengers. "Good? At this rate I consider any information as good news," he sighed, looking down at the screen and his written notes once again. He didn't trust technology would be with them forever at this rate and paper was so much more reliable when apocalypse loomed ahead, apparently.

The rest of his team was quiet, as were all the other specialists in the room.

"What do we know?" Fury sighed. His shoulders hunched as he leaned forward against the back of a chair; he looked like a man stretched too thin. Bruce knew how that felt.

The scientist glanced at Erik Selvig and Benjamin Pollack, the older man nodding at him. Bruce turned back to his screen and pressed on one, raising a hologram before all of them. "Four hours ago more of the ships lowered themselves all the way to the troposphere. Instead of these… mecha robots," he halted, glancing at Clint who had dubbed them as 'mecha' after their battle against one, "we got a fleet of Chitauri. This confirms for the first time whom we're up against," he stopped again, allowing clips of film to roll on the screen, showing a very familiar sight of their old enemy on their flying vehicles. "Their weaponry and means of transportation are the same as during the attack orchestrated by Loki; that we can deal with, thanks to Mr. Pollack's tireless work with the R&D department."

"You don't sound too happy with that," Fury noted.

"Oh, I'm thrilled we have something to fight back with," Bruce huffed. "The Chitauri are not the problem. The mecha are; we don't know how to fight them and they've already laid us bare against the Chitauri assault. They're destroying our resources, they're polluting the earth, the skies, the water, and have cut off the production of numerous items we will need in order to survive and treat the wounded – not to mention give the living a chance to survive this."

Fury nodded brusquely. "What do we know about the mecha?"

"Other than that they wiped the floor with us?" Clint muttered unhappily.

"We went in there unprepared," Steve soothed the burn of the archer's words yet he didn't seem happy with the result either; he was their leader and Bruce knew the man blamed himself for their inability to stop the mecha and prevent it from taking countless other lives as it tore through the rest of the Canadian nuclear power plants before moving on to other critical locations.

"We are still a step ahead of them," Hill commented. "We have surveillance. We have our military. We will fight back when we find out how."

"How is the key, but we haven't discovered it yet," Bruce noted. He shut down the screen of the Chitauri forces attacking a dam in China; they had already heard the news of the destruction that followed there. He pulled up another screen with schematics and facts he'd been able to collect of the mecha they had fought and footage shot of the others. There were over a dozen of them on Earth right now, all of them still operational regardless of the localized efforts to take them down.

"Their design is advanced. The surface material is difficult to penetrate and unknown to us; we can't analyze it until we get a sample. The surface also houses an electrical current that serves both as a shield and a weapon – and is able to adapt depending on the target. That's how he dealt with the other guy." Bruce could still feel an aching in his bones and muscle tissue. "Also, they seem to have a vast knowledge of human biology; the sonic attack proved that. The correct frequency puts the brain in an almost seizure-like state, stopping all coherent activity. Even Steve's super soldier serum couldn't compete with it – or the gamma radiation that usually protects the other guy. They are very basic techniques to overcome our opposition."

"So it's possible it can stop an entire army by emitting a simple sound?" Benjamin Pollack frowned. "Is there a way to block it?"

"Perhaps," Bruce thought about it for a moment. "It is also entirely possible the mecha would then change the frequency and find another way to disrupt the human brain, regardless of high-tech earplugs."

"Let's not assume that before we've seen it happen," Fury decided. "Get the scientists working on that. Perhaps there's also a way to neutralize that surface charge and get us a clear shot at these things."

Bruce nodded.

"Do we know what their power source is?" Pollack asked. "Moving that much mass effortlessly – and the charge they have to maintain or produce… it has to come from somewhere."

"That's another angle to consider. So far we haven't seen anything that points to a recharging of energy," Bruce mused, tapping his lips thoughtfully then closed his eyes and sighed.

"Dr. Banner?" Selvig asked after a moment, prodding him to hear if there was something on his mind.

Bruce took off his glasses without opening his eyes, wanting to imagine it just for a moment. When he looked at the room again, the reality was harsh and unforgiving. "I wish he were here," he said quietly, looking at the screens, then away, searching for something that wasn't there.

"Who?" Hill asked, clearly confused.

Bruce knew he couldn't say it. He wondered if he would have time to visit Malibu in the middle of all this, to strengthen his resolve to face this. Not that there was anywhere in the world he could run in order to escape this.

"Stark," Fury finally offered the answer.

Bruce looked at him, facing the expression that revealed so very little, yet he saw his own thoughts reflecting back from the brown eye; if Tony were here, he might be able to crack this. Robotics had been his specialty. Weapons like this, an energy source, tracking it down, hacking it apart, finding that missing piece of data…

"We'll just have to make do without him," Selvig said gruffly, crossing his fingers under his jaw.

A knock came from the door and an Agent – Sitwell, Bruce recalled from some meeting – poked his head in. "Sir, the Chitauri have moved their attacks to areas with civilian population. The robots seem to be joining them. A branch of them is headed for New York City."

"Alert the Army. Get our men ready," Fury replied, then looked around the table at the remaining Avengers. "We need you. The world needs you."

Steve nodded slowly, looking at the three of them in turn. "Let's suit up."

Clint didn't protest; Natasha said nothing at all but was the first to get up. Bruce, who was already on his feet, exchanged a look with Steve and felt the other guy stir inside him, ready for revenge and payback.

He wondered if the Hulk would still feel that way by the time this was over, one way or another.

* * *

"Benny!"

Benjamin Pollack turned to look and saw Claire running down the hall. His girlfriend appeared just as energetic as always, as if the world wasn't falling to ruin around them.

"I've been looking for you," Claire announced, reaching up to hug him tightly.

"I was in a meeting," Benny explained.

"With the Avengers?" Claire asked, eyes shining a bit.

"They were there."

"That's so awesome," she grinned, then slid her fingers through his hair. Benny tried not to look as bashful as he felt. "Come on, admit it: it's awesome. They're superheroes and you get to go to meetings with them!" Claire enthused.

"With a bunch of other people," Benny shrugged.

"Do they know your name?"

"Yeah," he admitted.

"Then you're way ahead of most of the Agent-what's-his-names!" Claire reached up and kissed him deeply, as if it were a reward. "I told you this would turn out great. You're so smart and they need you here."

Benny felt like pointing out how things hadn't really gone all that well for them after finding the alien weapon and getting it to work – which almost landed them in jail or got them killed, whichever you chose to believe. Then again, he had just sat in a meeting with the Avengers, got to work on defending the world from another alien invasion… which reminded him of how close they actually were to being taken over by said invasion.

He pulled Claire closer, cheer disappearing from his mind.

Claire noticed the change. "Benny? What's wrong?"

He wondered how much she knew, but then, any working news station was blasting their broadcasts with horrible images so even if she hadn't been officially notified of the situation – although he doubted anyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. was unaware of the disaster unfolding before their eyes – she would have seen it on TV. "I'm worried this won't end well," he admitted.

Her smile fell somewhat and she held him closer, too. "It will be okay, Benny."

Maybe she said it to cheer him up, to give him faith, yet he didn't see right now how it would end in any way but badly. Even if the aliens up and left right now, there were thousands of people, if not millions and more, affected by the nuclear disasters.

"Miss Wise," a man called from the other end of the hallway. Benny looked up, recognizing Agent Blake. The man seemed to be in a hurry, but who wasn't these days?

"Yeah, right," Claire cleared her throat then looked up at Benny. "We're going out with another Helicarrier. That thing's awesome, I've been told, and I'll hear from you soon, right?" She smiled brightly then pulled him into another kiss. "Go save the world – if I don't beat you to it," she grinned and then left. Perhaps she knew what was at stake and would rather not mention it. Well, Helicarriers were pretty safe, having the best cloaking devices in the world, so Benny decided not to worry about it. They wouldn't drag her into a war zone, assistant or no.

"Pollack," a voice called from behind him and Sitwell appeared there. "She'll be safe," the agent went on.

"I know," Benny replied.

"No, you don't know that," the agent corrected him. "You need to focus right now. I'm going with Claire and Agent Blake, and I promise you I'll do all I can to keep her from harm, should the worst happen."

Benny frowned. The worst? What was he talking about? "Okay," he replied hesitantly.

Sitwell placed a hand on his shoulder. "A lot is riding on you, I realize that. You've brought us far but we still ask a lot of you. Help us defeat those alien bastards."

"Yes, sir," Benny tried standing a little taller, a little more confident.

Sitwell nodded, pep-talk over, and strode down the hall to follow Claire and Agent Blake.

Benny suddenly got a funny feeling he might never see them again but pushed that to the far reaches of his mind and headed down to his lab to run a few more tests with Dr. Banner's calculations. The guy was smart, frighteningly so, and he wondered if that intellect wasn't wasted on him turning into the Hulk. Then again, the rage monster was their failsafe against any enemy so he guessed they would have to take the bad with the good.

* * *

The first city battles were brutal, not just in New York City but everywhere around the world.

While the Chitauri were not a new enemy their weapons had slightly changed over the gap of a few years. It was nothing their scientists couldn't handle in a short amount of time they were given to respond, but coordinating defense and attacks in multiple countries, under various chains of command, was nigh on impossible. Some people in command were arrogant and wanted to test their own theories instead of accepting information and orders from someone else. Nations stood divided when it mattered most, holding onto their independent decision-making.

Most of the fights ended worse then the few small bursts of success. As humanity was lacking a world-wide response, their enemy had the upper hand – and that was before the mecha arrived in the cities; the force that had torn apart factories and brought down entire buildings, unaffected by the chaos and screams of terror.

The evacuations weren't fast enough.

Their responses were ineffective.

While they concentrated their efforts on one mecha, the Chitauri were free to wreak havoc elsewhere, which in turn made them divide their forces too thin.

The loss of human life from the first few days could not be calculated at the time.

* * *

The armor wasn't made for running, Rhodey realized, storming across the hallway after smashing in through a window of Pepper's office at Stark International headquarters in California. He had tried calling her before the phones went dead. The communications with the Air Force were going all glitchy on him as well, separating him from the base. If the plans were still in effect, the fighters would be engaging the advancing enemy while the Army pulled as many of its forces from the evacuations as they dared.

Los Angeles had been hit just an hour ago and it didn't look good.

"Pepper!" he called out, popping open the faceplate.

Rhodey kept moving down the hall, scanning rooms with his eyes. Every once in a while a person would poke their head out of an office and stare at him. Hadn't they gotten used to Iron Man being their boss? War Machine's armor wasn't that different and he sure as hell couldn't afford the time to explain his hasty entrance. He simply told whomever he encountered to leave, to take their family and get out of the city right now.

"Happy!" he finally shouted, seeing a familiar shape. The man was just getting out of the elevator and Pepper followed him, looking a bit flustered. "Pepper, we need to leave right now. Happy, take her to the car and drive. I'll cover for you."

The bodyguard was already moving, grabbing Pepper's arm, but the woman resisted.

"What's going on, Rhodey?" she asked.

"They're coming, the aliens. They bombed and attacked L.A. just a moment ago and are moving north along the coast."

"No one's said anything –"

"The communications are down," Rhodey snapped, stepping forward, grasping her other arm. "Damn it, Pepper! We need to go."

"You should be out fighting," she said, voice quieter. As if those were words she had only ever said to someone else. She _had_. Well, maybe she had _prepared_ herself to say them to Tony, one day, if he ever fell behind on the action.

"I will be, but when I realized I couldn't call you I had to come," Rhodey told her, pushing her towards the elevator. "Sound the alarm when you're down. Get out of the city. Take the small roads if you can; the big ones will be crowded after the people realize what's going on."

"Aren't they going to evacuate?" Happy frowned, holding the elevator door open.

"They are trying to block the attack at Santa Monica. Seeing how much success we've had with every other attack, I'm not going to put too much stock in that," Rhodey admitted. He hated how they hadn't stood a chance, even the Avengers; the enemy was spreading them too thin and attacking too fast for anyone to properly mobilize. They needed more time to respond but if they did that, thousands of lives would be lost.

Happy finally pulled Pepper into the elevator and once it stopped at the garage floor, Rhodey walked back out to the window he had broken, then smashed a fire alarm on the way out. As he lowered the faceplate and looked out, he could see smoke in the distance.

It was too close.

They were coming in too fast.

He stepped off the ledge and fired the repulsors, shooting up into the air, circling the building until he saw Pepper's car speeding away. As if on cue, the city-wide sirens begun to wail, causing immediate chaos on the streets.

Rhodey knew he had already been selfish coming here, but had it been Tony…

Three fighters passed above him and he moved to join them, moving south, towards the smoke pillars. The fighters fired missiles at something and Rhodey kept tracking them all the way, seeing a shape move on the ground along the Pacific Coast Highway.

He squared his jaw. A mecha. He had been briefed about them, seen footage, but hadn't seen one in real life until now. "Time to see what your little robot insides are made of," he said and dove lower. The traffic was jammed, people abandoning their cars and running for safety. The army was nowhere to be seen. The radio was still silent – something he hadn't known to happen in prior attacks around the globe.

Rhodey looked around but didn't see Chitauri anywhere. Maybe they had stayed in L.A. Where was the mecha headed, then?

"Let's go and ask it," he mused, not expecting the suit to respond, of course, but it felt like he wasn't alone when he was wearing it. Maybe that's how Tony felt – although he'd always had J.A.R.V.I.S. for company.

He prepared the weapons and dove lower, waiting until he was in range and then let the robot have it. Rhodey couldn't really say he was surprised when even the ammo of the biggest caliber didn't slow it down, merely bouncing off the smooth surface. With an annoyed huff he stopped, hovering in the air, then decided to try something else; he aimed his hands at it and fired the repulsors, the beams hitting the thing square in the chest. He had heard how unfortunate others had been when trying to fire at a mecha with energy-based weapons but he didn't see any of that. Instead the rays seemed to grow more focused, making the robot's surface gleam and glow with a charge, creating ripples of sorts.

Clearly he was making some kind of impact because the mecha stopped, regarding him – then a long blade-looking thing slid out from its forearm.

"Shit," Rhodey swore and started moving, the blade swinging through the air, ready to cut him in half if it hit him. He dodged, flying closer, sliding between the giant legs, shooting the robot a few more times before coming up behind it. The mecha followed, swinging again, fast and agile. Its back panels seemed to shift and it sprouted a tail, almost whipping Rhodey to the ground as it came at him rather unexpectedly.

He dodged and attacked for a moment until there was a sort of a mechanical roar and Rhodey looked around long enough to see another mecha approaching. This one was coming from the north which made his heart sink a little.

_"War Machine?!"_ his radio suddenly burst into life, almost giving him a heart attack. _"We're sending you coordinates to a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier; Director Fury wants a word with you."_ That was an indication this contact was coming from S.H.I.E.L.D., not the Air Force.

"I'm a little busy here," Rhodey noted, firing at the oncoming mecha, then was slammed down as the first one struck him from above. He crashed into the road, picking himself up as fast as he could, stumbling to the side as his suit tried to catch up with the impact. The sword-like weapon struck hard into where he had just been, embedding itself deeply into the asphalt.

_"We have sent a team to extract Ms. Potts and Mr. Hogan and to bring them safely to the Helicarrier. We need you to come in,"_ the voice on the radio insisted,

A huge explosion skirted his vision as he rose into the air again to dodge any further attacks. Flames rose high in the direction of Los Angeles and he had a sinking feeling he couldn't do much else here. "Fine," he grunted then weaved past the two mecha, giving them a couple parting shots before flying higher.

The last time he turned to look towards Malibu, he saw a huge spaceship hovering near the shore. It was unlike any he had seen before, bigger and different in design. Currently it just seemed to be sitting still in the air – waiting for what, he couldn't tell.

He doubted it would be anything they'd like.

The coordinates came in and he turned to follow them, focusing on that, seeing as he had a bit of a flight ahead of him and he didn't want any of the enemies following his trail. He wondered what Fury wanted with him – other than maybe to try to fill Tony's shoes.

* * *

Claire Wise watched the screens in silence. It was unlike her to be so still, so focused – so concerned.

The attacks were spreading from one city to another – from one continent to another.

Somewhere out there Benny was working to counter the strange armed space-lizards called the Chitauri. He had been smart enough to get their weapon to work in the first place, before anyone else. He was important right now, helping real heroes to save the world.

Her optimism was beginning to crack. They hadn't won yet, people kept dying, and as easy as it may have been to pretend nothing horrible was going on while they flew among the clouds… It was happening, and it was very real.

The Helicarrier, after the first few hours of amazement, was beginning to feel like a cage. No ships were coming in or out. They were floating hidden in the sky, receiving messages and data, monitoring and forwarding information. She hadn't actually seen or talked to Benny since they parted ways in a S.H.I.E.L.D. base. She was confident he was safe, though, because he was important.

That didn't mean everyone else was.

"West Coast is being hit hard. We've lost communications with everything between Costa Mesa and Santa Barbara in California," an agent announced from one of the stations.

There was a collective silence for about three seconds, everyone paying their respects for those who had died, but whom no one mentioned anymore. There were just too many. They wouldn't have time to talk if they mourned all of them.

"Houston's gone," Agent Blake announced after a moment. "They tried to stop one of the mecha with a nuclear missile. The energy seemed to rebound and destroyed everything around it. No survivors within a fifty mile radius and that goddamn robot is still moving."

"Did they at least dent it?" Agent Sitwell asked, walking into the room, files in hand.

"Not that the satellites can detect, no," Agent Blake grunted.

Sitwell nodded. "Log that. Someone needs to find a way to get past that protective surface." He glanced at the screens, several feeds from satellites showing progress of both the enemy and their allies.

Claire looked at them as well, knowing she wouldn't recognize the places and maybe it was better that way; less personal. A little less real.

But it was real and had to be dealt with.

"If you were invading a planet," she mused out loud, biting her thumb thoughtfully, "wouldn't you first make sure your enemy wouldn't be able to track your movements? These are aliens, with spaceships, yet they haven't shot down or disabled our satellites or communications, other than when destroying our power supplies and being on a rampage."

Agent Blake gave her an annoyed look but before he could comment, Agent Sitwell raised his hand. "Why would they do that?" he seemed to agree. "They have paralyzed us on many fronts, but they've left our best communication and observation channels untouched."

"You think someone hasn't looked into that?" Agent Blake frowned. "Maybe we've just kept them busy." He didn't seem to believe it himself, though, and Claire kept looking at the images for a bit longer until another agent approached her.

"Ms. Wise, there's a call for you."

"From whom?" she asked in surprise.

"Benjamin Pollack from R&D."

"Don't take too long," Agent Blake told her and turned back to his screens.

She went over to an empty chair at the side of the room, finding the correct button to connect the call. "Benny!"

_"Hey, Claire,"_ Benny's familiar voice greeted her. _"Are you okay?"_

"Yes," she replied earnestly. "I was just thinking about you."

_"Yeah?"_

"Yeah," she grinned. "You're safe?"

_"Safe as I can be. Look, I can't talk for long –"_

"Me neither."

_"– but I wanted to hear your voice, and, uh, you know… make sure everything's going well."_

He sounded so tired that Claire wanted to tell him to go to bed, but while the world was being torn to pieces there was no time to rest. "How are the Avengers doing? Have you seen them?" she asked instead, trying to make him think of something positive.

_"They're fighting. They refuse to think it's a losing battle but so many people are… gone… Dr. Banner came down to our labs yesterday, to try work out some things, but they needed him back on the field before he got any real work started."_

While Banner's identity as the Hulk may have been a secret before, this war had blown it wide open inside S.H.I.E.L.D. Everyone knew the man was their most valuable ally – in either form. He was the only one so far to make a dent in one of those robots and his brain might eventually find a solution to all their problems.

Problem was, Banner could only be in one place at a time, and that was either fighting beside the Avengers or in a lab spinning theories and conducting tests.

_"I need to go,"_ Benny said suddenly. _"There's… so much I need to do, but not before I tell you I love you."_

Claire smiled although Benny couldn't see it. "I love you, too."

_"Stay safe."_

"You, too."

In their current situation such simple words shouldn't have made her feel better, but they did. Perhaps the harsh reality simply hadn't hit her yet, and she would be happily living in blissful ignorance until it did.

_to be continued…_


	9. Chapter 8: Succor

**Chapter 8: Succor**

* * *

**Asgard**

They had traveled to a faraway world to help settle a dispute between two warring nations. A peace had been brokered and Thor was anxious to return home to Asgard with his friends; a feast of success would await them upon their arrival and they all had marvelous stories to tell. The Lady Sif and Warriors Three had once again proven themselves worthy allies yet Thor thought of others as well – his fellow Avengers in Midgard.

Perhaps once the festivities were done he would speak to his father and return to Earth once more, to meet his newest allies and perhaps enjoy the simpler life of Jane Foster whom he missed.

As a familiar sight finally greeted their eyes, he felt a sense of calm; with the Bifrost still broken, traveling between realms was harder and time-consuming. He longed to bathe before the feast, to wash the grime from his skin and feel like a man reborn. Yet all that was merely an old routine; nothing compared to the unexpected joys of Midgard.

"Do not look so glum!" Volstagg slapped him hard on the back. "We shall feast tonight and regale everyone with our latest feats!" He marched off, his mighty axe slung over one shoulder.

Hogun followed him like a silent shadow, giving Thor a brief nod.

Fandral, who no doubt planned on amazing several Asgardian ladies tonight with beautiful stones he had brought with him, smiled and hurried after the others.

Sif was the only one who remained, sword on her side, shield strapped to her back. "You are thinking of Midgard," she mused.

"Aye," Thor admitted. "It has been too long since I traveled there."

"We need you here as well – in Asgard," she insisted.

Thor shook his head. "You have many mighty warriors here and the Realms are peaceful. Should there be a danger, I shall of course return, but Midgard needs me."

Sif sighed, looking displeased by this but not enough to protest. Those looks had been more frequent after the Chitauri attempted to invade Earth and Thor united his power alongside the champions of Midgard. He had more reasons to return to the Middle Realm now than he'd had after his exile there – and Sif knew this.

"Perhaps you will join me," Thor offered. Perhaps if Sif saw what he did, she would understand.

"It is not my place there," she objected.

"But you would be welcomed."

Sif opened her mouth to speak then closed it, looking past Thor. He followed her gaze, finding Heimdall standing there, his face grim with concern; that was always a poor omen.

"Heimdall," Thor greeted the gatekeeper.

"Thor Odinson," Heimdall bowed his head. "I have a need to speak with you."

Thor knew better than to assume this could take place after his bath. The shadows of concern on Heimdall's face pierced a deep fear into his heart and he followed the man back to his observatory. "What concerns you?" Thor asked once they were alone; Sif had fallen back, knowing Heimdall would have stated clearly if this was for her ears as well.

"Midgard has come under an attack," the gatekeeper announced gravely. "The Chitauri forces have traveled across space and are bringing a war upon the human race."

Thor blinked, unable to believe it, then his fingers squeezed around the handle of Mjolnir. "How dare they?! Was one defeat not enough for them?"

"They have found new weapons," Heimdall spoke. "Something the Midgardians cannot defeat."

"Weapons?"

"Nothing I have ever seen before. They remind me of the Destroyer, yet they do not require a spirit within them; strange machines that are bringing the humans to their knees."

Thor could no longer stand still, pacing back and forth, Mjolnir heavy in his hand. "How long ago did the attack begin?"

"It has not been long but the enemy is advancing quickly," Heimdall told him. "If you wish to join your Avengers, you must make that decision quickly."

Thor nodded grimly and swung the hammer in his hand, taking off into the air, flying out towards Odin's palace. He would have words with his father.

Odin's rooms were silent when Thor entered. Distant sounds could be heard from the Hall, echoing along the massive hallways, yet when he closed to door of his father's room, it all disappeared. Odin was alone, seated in a chair, staring out a window. He must have known Thor was coming – and why.

"Father," Thor greeted hastily. "Midgard is in danger. We must go for their aid."

The Allfather was silent for a long time, testing Thor's patience. Heimdall's concern had sparked Thor's own, making him wonder just how many of the Chitauri there were, and how much havoc they were wreaking on his beloved Midgard.

"Earth is lost," Odin finally replied in the solemn voice Thor had gotten used to after they thought they had lost Loki.

Thor's concern sparked anger and defiance. "Earth has not been lost yet. Its champions will defend it to their deaths!"

"And how do you know they have not yet fallen?"

"If they have, I will avenge them all," Thor vowed, yet he would not believe it; the noble Captain, the mighty Hulk, the far-sighted Hawkeye and clever Black Widow; they could out-match this enemy as they had before, yet they needed his help – and they would have it. "I will go to Midgard," Thor spoke louder. "And if Earth is truly lost… then I shall die defending it."

Odin let out a heavy sigh. "I cannot keep you from going," he said, "but know this, Odinson: if the Earth falls and its champions with it, it is only a matter of time before the Chitauri turn their eyes on another prize. Asgard may yet need you. Do not throw away your life in a war that is but a taste of what is to come."

"It is my decision, father," Thor replied. "I am the protector of Earth, and I have neglected my duty. If I can stop it, Midgard shall be saved and our enemies beaten, no matter of the weapons they wield this time."

His father nodded, knowing him well enough to not fight. Thor had defied him before and this was for a nobler reason than any of their prior arguments.

He strode out, breathing hard, dread twisting his insides. How bad was it that his father deemed Earth lost before the fight had even ended? Was this new weapon of the Chitauri truly so mighty that the Allfather dreaded for the safety of Asgard?

All the more reason for Thor to stop them before it came to that.

"Thor!"

He stopped and turned his head to see Sif and the Warriors Three advancing.

"Is it true that Midgard is being attacked by the enemy you once defeated?" Fandral asked.

Thor nodded solemnly. "Had we come back earlier, I may have been there to prevent it…"

"It is not your fault," Sif reassured him. "You have other duties –"

"I am going to Midgard," Thor interrupted her. "You will not stop me. My father thinks Earth has already been lost but I refuse to believe this until I have done my all to defend the Middle Realm."

Volstagg nodded along then tore a last strip of meat from a bone he was holding; clearly he had already made it to the feast before Sif sought them out to meet Thor. "And we shall come with you."

"My friends," Thor started.

"Our minds are made up," Fandral smiled tensely. "This enemy seems formidable and we have stood by your side before. We will join you to defend the Realm you love so much."

Hogun nodded his approval between them. Had he found a reason to object, he would have spoken up, but his silence bore all the marks of agreement.

"We should go," Sif added, taking a small step forward. "The rumors promised nothing good and Heimdall and Allfather must have told you more than we already know."

Thor nodded his head, smiling at the four warriors. His confidence was lifting. "We shall go. However, there is something I need to take there with us."

* * *

Loki glanced up as the door of his prison was opened. The darkness flooded with light and it was as if life pumped through him again instead of cold, dark nothingness. He knew not whom to expect yet he was still surprised to find his brother at the door, flanked by his warrior friends.

"Have you come to mock me?" Loki asked.

"Nay, brother," Thor shook his head sadly. "There is something I require of you." Lady Sif and the Warriors Three looked ill at ease, as if they had not expected this nor liked the plan now that it was unfolding, whatever it was.

"Require?" Loki's mouth twitched. "I do not understand."

"We are returning to Midgard, to battle the Chitauri that are at war with the humans. You will come with us and assist us in defeating the enemy you first brought to their doorstep."

That was unexpected. The Chitauri had found their way back to Earth? And for what purpose? The Tesseract was safely locked away by Odin, so there was nothing left for them on Earth.

Other than revenge.

"And what if I do not desire to partake on your little trip?" he asked carefully. Loki was not about to place himself in the hands of the Chitauri; even if the defeat had not been entirely his fault, he doubted the Chitauri would see it that way. They had lost the Tesseract and would hold Loki responsible to this.

"It was not a request," Thor's voice was filled with steel which he usually reserved for anyone but Loki. He was serious and Loki doubted there was anything he could do to refuse the man he used to call brother.

He got up to his feet and followed the five of them out into the brilliantly beautiful day. That he felt sick in the stomach had nothing to do with the relief of finally tasting freedom again.

_to be continued…_


	10. Chapter 9: Rise and Fall

**Chapter 9: Rise and Fall**

* * *

The skies were still rumbling as the dust settled. Thor straightened, breathing in the air but finding its aroma very different from his last visit. He looked around, seeing nothing move but his allies.

"I did not remember it was this… quiet," Fandral observed.

"It wasn't," Thor frowned. "Something's not right."

They had chosen the familiar Bifrost site in a park in the heart of New York City, yet most of the trees looked like they had been unearthed or burnt. The few that remained standing had lost their leaves and appeared dead, the grass and other plants shriveled. The city skyline was different, lined with half-destroyed buildings and smoking ruins.

"This is a battlefield," Sif spoke, voice hushed.

"I don't see anyone to fight," Volstagg complained.

"Nor defenders," Hogun offered the most grim observation of all.

Thor had to agree with all of them. "We must find the Avengers," he deemed next.

"Where do you presume we start looking?" Fandral asked.

Thor looked around once more, wondering about it himself, then his eyes landed on Loki. He had not said a word, looking around slowly, a measured expression on his face. "What do you think, brother?"

Loki shook his head, eyes narrowing, but he didn't snap at him nor did he speak. He kept glancing around, from the city to the husks of trees then back again, his expression more cautious every second. "We are not alone," he said finally.

"I cannot see anyone," Volstagg declared.

"Can you not silence him? Even the dead hear him," Loki snapped.

Volstagg took a step towards him but Thor raised his hand and the large warrior huffed and hefted his axe, glancing around suspiciously.

"What do you mean, we are not alone?" Sif asked, clearly not liking the situation.

"We should move," Fandral appeared to agree with her concern. "Until we know where we are headed, perhaps we should –"

A strange roar echoed in the air and something large moved between the buildings. A shadow was cast by the sun, following the movements of whatever was approaching, then they finally saw it; a metallic creature, easily more than twice as tall as the Destroyer, its fingers digging into a nearby building and making chunks of it fall down to the abandoned street. Its glowing red eyes looked straight at them. It looked fairly human in shape, save for the tail swinging behind it, making it lean forward like a predator ready to attack.

"Is that the new weapon of the Chitauri?" Volstagg frowned. "It doesn't look like much."

Thor held Mjolnir tighter. "Let it taste the weapons of Asgard!" he roared.

The metal creature roared back, bracing its body, moving towards them across the distance, its feet crushing cars and small buildings under its weight. Thor raised Mjolnir, urging the clouds to gather, summoning the lightning, then hit the machine hard. Its metal skin lit up, the lightning licking across the smooth surface then slowly began to vanish. When the last flicker was gone, the machine seemed completely unaffected and resumed moving towards them in measured steps.

Thor raised Mjolnir once more but felt a hand on his arm. He looked to find Loki beside him, intently staring at their mechanical opponent. "It absorbed the lightning," Loki spoke. "Do _not_ feed it again; I don't want to know what happens when it's had enough."

Reluctantly Thor agreed. It hadn't seemed to hurt the creature in any way.

"What would you like us to do, then?" Fandral asked bitingly.

"Attack it," Loki replied, unaffected by his tone.

There was no time for further planning before the machine was above them, the ground trembling beneath its approach. Thor sent Mjolnir flying at its head but the creature dodged at the last moment, following the hammer's movements as if begun to circle back. It moved aside again at the last moment but Mjolnir almost hit it in the shoulder. Thor snarled and the others moved towards it, weapons at a ready. Volstagg was the first to strike one tall leg with his axe, his victorious roar cutting the air. It turned into a bellow of pain as the leg lit up upon contact, with a blue flash which sent the warrior flying back through the air, taking down a tree as he crashed down.

Fandral and Sif closed in on the other leg, eyeing it suspiciously, then Fandral tested his sword against the surface, drawing back at once when a similar zap of light began to appear.

"We cannot touch it!" Sif shouted.

Hogun threw his morning star at the limb Volstagg had tried attacking, the weapon colliding then being thrown back, almost striking its owner as it was deflected from the metal surface without making actual contact.

A sound almost like a huff came from above them and then one leg moved, tearing into the ground, sending them flying for cover or be crushed beneath earth and metal.

"Any other ideas?" Sif shouted at Loki.

Thor glanced at his brother, seeing a familiar expression on his face; he was plotting. "Loki," he warned loudly. "The return of your magic was conditional upon your willingness to help us."

"All I am willing to do is to survive through this ordeal," Loki hissed back at him. He looked up next, bringing his hands together, his lips moving without a sound coming through. When his palm parted, a bright orb floated between them, which he then sent at the metal creature. It screeched, light exploding all over it. Smoke wafted off its metal skin yet no apparent damage remained. However, the creature didn't seem happy, which meant Loki must have done something none of them could.

However, with the creature's wrath upon them, it strode at them again, one long arm swooping down. Thor lifted Mjolnir, daring the machine to touch him – then a beam of light shot through the sky at the thing, hitting its back, making it straighten up. For a brief moment Thor imagined he was dreaming, a suit of armor coming to a halt mid-air, one hand raised, its familiar glowing weapon ready to shoot again.

It wasn't Iron Man, however. The colors were wrong, the body bulkier. "Run," it called out to them in a male voice.

"I am Thor –" he began.

"I know who you are. I'll keep it occupied and then come find you," the man in the armor cut him off impatiently and shot at the machine again, making it turn and chase after him, back in between the buildings.

"I think we found one of your friends," Fandral said cheerfully, helping Volstagg back to his feet; the larger man still seemed disoriented from the blow that sent him flying.

"Nay, he is not the Man of Iron I fought with," Thor shook his head, the loss gripping him once again. They may have had their differences in the beginning but Thor had respected Iron Man's strength and valor – and later, his sacrifice to save his world. Thor felt he was obliged to follow in his footsteps and protect Midgard. However, to be asked to retreat…

"We should go," Sif said, looking back in the direction where the machine had disappeared. "Your… The warrior in a flying armor told us to leave here."

Grudgingly Thor led them away from the buildings and further into the dead forest although he had no idea where they should be headed. The sounds of battle had ceased behind them and Thor wondered if this new Man of Iron had survived. A while later he heard a familiar sound, however, and the gray shape flew past them then curved back and landed.

"You took care of the machine?" Fandral asked.

"Led it away is more like it," came a reply. "You cannot really… We haven't found a way to actually defeat them yet." The armored face looked at Thor. "I'm War Machine. Once we noticed you arrived, Fury sent me to pick you up. We need to regroup and get our bearings."

Thor nodded slowly. "Your armor is…"

"One of Tony's," came a quick slash of a reply. "He… gave it to me. Sort of."

Loki was regarding War Machine with curiosity. "You knew him. Stark."

"He was my friend," War Machine admitted.

"I grieve his loss with you," Thor offered. "He was a good man."

"You didn't know him. But… Yeah, I guess he was." The subject seemed to trouble their new friend and he turned away slightly. "We have a bit to go on foot. We have to be careful not to lead any enemies back to base."

"Lead the way, War Machine," Thor nodded.

The glowing red eyes looked at them again as if there was something he wanted to ask. "You are… really not from around here," War Machine stated.

Thor chuckled. "Nay, my friend, but we are here to help."

"Him, too?" an armored finger pointed at Loki and the edge was back.

Loki's face froze slightly. "I would have rather stayed back home," he replied. "I wasn't given what you might call a 'choice' in the matter."

"Well, you might just wish you had actually stayed at home," War Machine noted. "Some people won't be happy to see you."

"Loki may be able to help us," Sif said surprisingly. "His magic might be able to damage those mechanic creatures."

That seemed to be enough for War Machine to actually consider the idea. He turned away again, then rotated back and looked them over once more. "Are you all feeling well?"

"Yes, why?" Volstagg asked defensively.

"Well… there are lingering amounts of radiation in the air due to a nuclear meltdown in the area. None of you seem particularly affected."

Thor exchanged looks with his friends then returned to War Machine. "I'm not sure I understand. Is that why the air smells so strange?"

He wasn't sure but perhaps War Machine chuckled. "Okay, you're _really_ not from around here… This way," he then motioned and began to walk ahead of them into the trees.

* * *

The room was pitch black, closed off from the elements and fresh air. A far-away murmur of the rolling sea against stone cliffs reverberated up the outer wall. Distant yet close. Like a different world just beyond the walls.

Inside, the room was as quiet as it was dark, as if waiting to be purposed again.

A hum broke the silence, increasing, triggering other sounds; life returning to the darkness with brief blinks of various small lights. A processor ticked faster and faster until the sounds were too frequent to be told apart.

On a dust-covered desk a screen flickered and filled the space a steady stream of light.

A signal had come in and it had been acknowledged.

* * *

When he was first brought to a Helicarrier, Steve had never thought to ask whether there was more than one.

On the brink of this war he had come to understand just how many weapons S.H.I.E.L.D. had at its disposal. The Helicarriers were spread around the world, serving as highly sheltered bases of operation, remaining in the air and undetected by their enemies. The largest served as Fury's own, more reclusive and hidden than the others which meant hours of maneuvering as they tried to arrive to it without being found out by possible alien spies.

Once there, Steve found the other Avengers were already present. They had fought together and separately depending on the situation on the last few weeks. Clint and Natasha had provided some great recon on the movements of the Chitauri but the mecha still eluded them all; whoever controlled them was harder to track and much more difficult to anticipate. They had just tried to ambush one a few days ago and Steve wasn't sure if he could ever scrub the dirt and dried blood from his skin; when the call to back off had finally been given, there weren't many left to return home and the mecha was still moving, although with a limp.

"Tell me you've found something," Steve asked as he walked into the lab where Bruce was currently seated, looking like he hadn't slept in months; he clearly didn't have enough time to recuperate from his transformations into the Hulk, or to heal the injuries even the beast had sustained trying to destroy the mecha. By far the Hulk had been the only one to actually make a dent and give the rest of them an opening to strike, although it always came with a cost.

Bruce looked up, his eyes a little red. "Yes and no," he replied. "Good news is that Thor arrived today with backup."

Steve halted, surprise and relief flooding him. "Yeah?"

Bruce nodded. "They appeared in NYC, Rhodey went to pick them up before they get trampled by one of the mecha we've sighted in the area."

"Perhaps Thor has it in him to take one of them down."

"Unfortunately not, my friend," a familiar voice boomed from behind them and Thor strode in, catching Steve into a mighty hug.

Steve held him back for a moment, dismissing his protesting body. Behind Thor were gathered a woman and three men that Steve had only seen on file – and Loki. He pulled back once he spotted their enemy but knew better than to question it; knowing Thor, he was attempting to let his brother redeem himself. As long as Loki didn't work against them, Steve would allow him to stand with them. If not… the Hulk could finish him off this time.

"You fought a mecha?" Steve asked, returning to the previous topic.

"If that is what you call that giant metal creature," Thor nodded. "It seemed most resistant against our attacks." He sounded almost like a child whose game had been foiled by someone stronger than himself.

"We still haven't cracked the surface barrier," Bruce spoke up.

"It seems to adapt very quickly," Loki agreed.

There was a brief, tense silence before Bruce nodded. "Yes, it does. All of our energy-based weapons are useless and actually feed it. That charge is then used against us – in worst case scenario released all at once and decimating everything around the mecha." He tapped his screen and brought up an image from what used to be a city in Germany. "Inside its advanced mechanics, whatever we've gotten to see of it. So far we haven't been able to get a specimen because regardless of the damages, they've always walked away – or if unable, another mecha is always at the ready to show up and defend the injured one."

"They are like pack animals," Erik Selvig noted, appearing from behind a door, giving them all a court nod. Bejamin Pollack followed him, hand moving across the surface of a tablet as he walked. "We've watched their behavior. Although they seem to be able to act alone, there is always another mecha near by. They protect each other and are careful not to be caught by us. In a few instances we've actually won because they backed off."

"Yet they always come back," Steve noted.

"They don't take risks, knowing they can overthrow us later," Bruce mused unhappily. "They have the time to wait. We don't; we're losing ground, losing too many people and we can't protect those who can't fight." A note of desperation rang in his voice.

"We will find a way together," Thor assured them all.

He introduced Lady Sif and the Warriors Three to everyone. Although the Asgardians looked completely alien standing in the middle of a high-tech lab, Steve was willing to welcome them all.

Even Loki, he supposed, although that would take a bit more work.

James Rhodes walked in a moment later, free of the suit. After West Coast was overwhelmed by enemies, Fury had enlisted him, convincing the Air Force and Rhodes that he could help S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avengers more. "Fury wants to see us," he noted.

Bruce sighed, putting away his current project. Selvig and Pollack followed them to the bridge, the Asgardians looking around in mild wonder – well, all save for Thor and Loki who had already seen it all.

They entered the bridge and a female voice called out: "Rhodey!" Pepper Potts pushed her way through to them and briefly hugged Rhodes. He embraced her back – something people did a lot these days, knowing every time could be the last. "I heard you went to New York," she said.

Rhodes nodded. "The Tower was still standing," he replied, clearly speaking of the Stark Tower.

Pepper nodded then laughed nervously. "It must sound stupid, in the middle of all this…" She pushed at her hair nervously then went and took a seat at the large table, picking a spot beside Happy Hogan, her bodyguard – and perhaps lover, Steve was sure the signs were there. Natasha and Clint were already present and for the time being it seemed Natasha and Pepper were actually in talking terms again, for the first time since Tony's death.

The Asgardians were introduced to the rest of their allies then Fury stepped up, giving them all a long look. Agent Hill followed him, sliding up the opaque walls to block the noises of the rest of the bridge.

"Thor, it's good to see you," Fury greeted the God of Thunder.

"I'm sorry to come so late," Thor replied, voice filled with regret.

Fury just nodded. "The situation hasn't changed drastically in the last few days but we're still losing this war," he finished. Silence circled him for a long moment.

"My friends!" Thor finally stepped up. "Certainly you are not giving up?"

"Of course not," Natasha shook her head. "We're fighting this one to the end."

"The facts are there, though," Fury went on. "Our energy sources, industry and agriculture are all but gone. The amount of civilian casualties is staggering. Armies around the world are engaging the Chitauri, winning minor victories but as long as the mecha go unchallenged, we are going to lose."

"Then we find a way to defeat those machines," Thor announced.

"We would if we could," Pollack said bravely. "We even tried an EMP. Sure, it looked like we gave the mecha a major headache but it still managed to walk away while it fried whatever we had left of the usable tech in the area."

"The Stark Industries weapons seem to be working best," Agent Hill summarized. "Thanks to Ms. Potts, we've have moderate success in mapping out weak spots and taking down more of the Chitauri, yet when we make bold moves, they move to counter-act. Last night three major hospitals were destroyed. Weapons depots have been under attacks and the Chitauri have taken it upon themselves to breach prisons and let the convicts out. We have riots, people attacking each other over the most basic necessities and frankly, we've been handicapped from day one without noticing it until now. Since the beginning they made sure the people would turn against each other, that our own technology – or lack of it – would throw the humanity into chaos, making our efforts to protect ourselves twice as hard. They've moved too fast for us to react and know how to pull apart our forces."

Silence followed Hill's statement.

"Who told them all that?" Loki suddenly spoke and all eyes turned to him. He raised his hands slowly. "I didn't tell them," he said in his defense. "They gave me an army but never questioned how I would win the Earth – and obviously my plans didn't work very well," he added dryly.

Bruce snorted with something that may have been a well-contained laugh. Maybe the other guy found it funny.

"What I meant," Loki went on, "is that the Chitauri had no knowledge of how Earth functioned, yet these attacks, as you put them, shot you in the knee from the beginning. They are using your weaknesses, exploiting them, hitting where it hurts most in an indirect way. Where did they get that information?"

"Maybe they spied on us," Happy mused.

"While traveling across space?" Loki dismissed that idea at once.

"You think we have a leak?" Fury asked.

"One must consider it, although…" Loki pursed his lips. "Those machines… They are very adept at responding at everything you've tried attacking them with, correct?"

"Yes," Bruce nodded.

"Building such things takes time, and they didn't have those machines when I was planning on defeating you with their army," Loki finished.

"Could they have left spies here when we closed the portal?" Natasha asked.

"No," Loki refused again. "The Chitauri cannot survive in Earth's atmosphere for long. That is why, when you blew up their mothership, all of them fell. Their harness provided a connection to their own world, and without it…"

"They could not survive," Steve nodded. "Do you think they took captives, then, while being here?"

"I don't think they would have had the interest since they only had eyes for the Tesseract, yet that seems a very believable route to finding out ways to bring down the human race," Loki nodded.

Thor looked pleased his brother was actually helping, giving Steve a confident look. "Were any of your people reported missing?"

"People go missing all the time," Fury mused. "We'll cover that lead, though, just to be sure." His eye remained on Loki for a while longer. "I never knew you were so keen on helping anyone but yourself," he evaluated.

Loki snorted. "Don't doubt your opinion of me just yet, Director. I was brought here against my will and the last thing I want is to end in the hands of the Chitauri now that I'm here." He looked around the room as if to see if someone understood. Steve wasn't sure he did, nor did anyone else. Loki huffed. "I failed to hand them the Tesseract, and because of that they have a good reason to harm me severely."

"So you're just looking out for yourself," Clint narrowed his eyes.

"For now that benefits you as well," the trickster replied. "As long as you stand between me and the Chitauri, I'm happy to provide you with all the help I can to keep it that way."

"And here I thought he was just doing this out of the goodness of his heart," Bruce murmured with sarcasm lacing every word.

Steve guessed he wasn't the only one who blamed Loki for Tony's death, although for the time being allying themselves with the God of Lies would get them farther than throwing him to the wolves.

* * *

The last Claire had heard, they were floating somewhere above Newfoundland. In the midst of clouds it really didn't matter _where_ they were but she knew remaining undetected was their biggest strength so there was no cruising around to see the sights.

End of the world-events clearly sucked.

It wasn't that she didn't understand what was at stake. With each new devastating loss it was clearer she might never see Benny again, and even if she did, for how long? Whatever these Chitauri were, they clearly didn't intend to rule humanity, but rather eradicate it from the face of the earth.

Agent Sitwell entered the room. She hoped he had news because Agent Blake was just as boring and unforthcoming as always. The other personnel looked up, perhaps sharing the same sentiment, and Agent Sitwell actually smiled. "We have good news; Thor has arrived to Earth."

A murmur of agreement went around.

Of what Claire knew, Thor was allegedly a Norse god of thunder and had helped the Avengers defeat the Chitauri the first time. Perhaps he would help them again and they would win this war. No one dared to say it out loud but they had to be thinking that their luck was turning.

Agent Blake checked his screen, probably finding a confirmation of the news. "About time," he decided then, only half-glowering for a change. "Has the message been sent out?"

Agent Sitwell nodded. "To all our S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives and allies across the world via safe networks. The Asgardians also have new approaches to find ways to win the war." He pointed at the screen and Agent Blake opened a file. Claire tried to peer at it but she was too far away.

"I trust this reached only the appropriate recipients?" Agent Blake mused.

"Of course. It's just as much guesswork as everything else, but we're finally –"

The lights flickered.

Claire sat up straight, listening, as did everyone else.

"A hiccup," one of the technicians guessed.

The lights flickered again, then for two seconds everything shut down. Claire felt her stomach clench as she felt the entire ship being grabbed by gravity then catch itself again as the power came back on.

"A damn big hiccup," Agent Blake snarled. "Find out what's causing it!"

Several people sprung up from their chairs but no sooner had they reached the doors when a ship-wide alarm came to life, deafening and sudden yet pushing the rest of them into action.

"What's going on?" Claire asked, running along with the others before the entire mass of people stopped; they had hit a wall – or rather, a closed door. Claire turned back, to return the way they had come, but saw another door closing, blocking the way, trapping them in. She looked to the side frantically, wall on one side, a wide window on the other, and when she got the first glimpse of the outside world through the window, she froze along with others; above them they could see an immense ship, easily twice the size of the Helicarrier.

Agent Sitwell halted beside her, looking out, and something in his stance changed. It was so alien it took Claire a while to process it, then realized it was defeat. Fear gripped her at that realization; there were only a few things she could think of that could cause a top agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. to give up, and certain death might be one of them.

She didn't want to die. Not like this. Not when the bottom of the alien ship began to open up and something shifted inside the newly exposed space. This was perhaps the closest anyone had gotten to see a mecha unfolding, staring down at them, perhaps through this very window at Claire's frightened eyes.

"They're hacking in!" a man's voice shouted from the side. "They're taking over our systems. We're getting feedback from the other Helicarriers… they've been compromised as well." The lights flickered again as if in confirmation.

Claire let out a pitiful little whimper, completely aware of it but unable to hold it back. She hadn't signed up for this and she couldn't grasp that fire inside her that said it would all be okay, that they would find a way out of this.

The mecha was moving, crawling out, hanging onto its ship yet clearly poising itself to drop on top of them.

Whether she was the first to initiate contact or it just happened, she felt a hand curl around hers, squeezing in comfort. Agent Sitwell was still looking out yet his grasp was firm. "Weapons status?" his voice called out.

"Nonresponsive," the same voice from before replied. "Outbound messages are being blocked. No more data coming in. Blast doors are being closed. They're sealing us in."

"Can you crack it?"

"I don't think we have time for that, sir."

Agent Sitwell nodded then looked at Claire, who saw it from the corner of her eye. "Ms. Wise," he spoke up. "Somewhere out there Mr. Pollack is safe. He's a valuable asset and will be looked after. You should take comfort in that."

Claire nodded and tore her eyes off the ship. "I wish he was here."

"No, you don't; that would be selfish," Agent Sitwell replied.

It was hard to process but yes, she knew Benny was important and regardless of what happened today, he would continue to fight. No matter how much she didn't want to be alone right now, she loved him enough to not want him to go down with her, although it was hard to conclude that. "Thanks, Agent," she whispered back.

"Call me Jasper," Agent Sitwell smiled faintly.

The entire ship rocked under a new weight and a sound of metal tearing through metal echoed along the walls. The pressure of the air begun to change and the lights started flickering in a rapid pace. An explosion rocked the floor, making it ripple, and the window beside them fractured slightly.

Claire bit her lip and watched the people shift uneasily, touching their weapons, looking uncertain. No one was giving orders. Why was no one giving orders?

The corridor seemed to lurch and the sound of pieces being torn apart increased. It was getting harder to breathe.

"Should we more?" Claire asked as another fracture almost split the window.

"This is a good place," Jasper Sitwell decided. "The blast doors are locked down and we can go no further. It doesn't matter." He looked at her. "I'm sorry, Claire. This isn't your place. You shouldn't be here."

"If I weren't, you would be alone," she noted, hysteria trying to grip her mind. The air was getting thinner and hotter and she smelled smoke. Not wanting to do this alone, she moved closer, releasing the hand of the man she barely knew and hugged him instead. He hugged her back, holding tight as the window exploded beside them from the pressure and the wall began to bend under inhuman strength.

* * *

"Sir!" a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent rushed in, flushed in the face, something akin to terror in his eyes.

Fury turned from the table where schematics, calculations, news and enemy movements were all spread around the virtual desk. "What is it?"

Steve looked up from the other side of the table where he had been focusing on some of the new intel. The other Avengers, spread around the room with a few scientists, stopped their discussions as well.

"The Helicarriers, sir… They are being attacked," the agent delivered his message.

"Attacked?" Fury snapped.

"Yes, sir. All their locations have been compromised by the enemy. Their systems are being hacked and… Chitauri ships with a mecha have parked above each one. We've gotten confirmation from the satellites that the mecha are tearing the Helicarriers apart."

"Tell them to evacuate," Fury replied.

"All communications have been cut off. The last burst of data showed that the crew had been sealed in, the weapons deactivated."

Fury stood there numbly for a moment. "What about us?" he asked, voice almost adopting something that usually wasn't there.

Steve directed a look upward although he knew he wouldn't see anything but the ceiling.

"There's no indication that our position has been compromised," the agent said slowly. "We are monitoring the situation, though – with human eyes – and have taken the necessary steps to ensure our systems cannot be breached from the outside."

"Claire is on one of the other Helicarriers," Benjamin Pollack spoke up suddenly, standing up. "You have to do something."

"What are you suggesting we do?" Fury asked him, looking over his shoulder. "Those Helicarriers are all full of trained professionals –"

"Who according to the news have been sealed in like ants in a container!" Pollack shouted, shaking. "You have to go," he went on, looking at Steve. "The Avengers can stop them."

"Which ship is she on?" Steve asked slowly. He was sure he had met her, perhaps briefly, but he was unsure if they had the time.

"Ms. Wise was on a ship currently above Newfoundland, assigned there with Agent Blake," Fury dug from his memory.

"That ship was one of the first to go down," the agent who had brought the news said quietly.

Pollack stood there in shocked silence then sat down, almost missing his chair; Clint pushed it beneath him just in time so that he wouldn't hit the floor.

"I'm sorry," Bruce was the first to offer his condolences, having spent more time with Pollack than the rest of the Avengers. He looked at Fury then. "Is there anything we can do? Are there any Helicarriers left that we can get to in time?"

Fury stepped over to his screen, tapped furiously at it and then just stared for a long moment. Steve knew the answer by then, sensing it but not wanting to say anything. "They're all gone," the Director finally announced. "Every single one of them, in matter of minutes." He contemplated on that for a moment, dismissing the agent who had brought the news with an angry motion of his hand; the agent was happy to exit the room.

"How did this happen?" Natasha asked. "Why now? If they could find the Helicarriers, why wait until today to attack them? They were an important part of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s operation from the beginning."

Steve wasn't certain if he could just jump right into solving this mystery from the fact that thousands of people had just died, unable to defend themselves. Perhaps they had tried, maybe they had fought until the last moment as a mecha destroyed the Helicarrier, but they were all dead now and the Avengers hadn't even had time to get out of their chairs to help them.

"They hacked the Helicarrier systems just prior to the attack," Bruce frowned. "They owned the ships, controlled them, and then all they needed to do was take them down."

"Effortless," Loki commented from the corner where he had mostly kept to himself. "It is amazing, isn't it, how easily they've secured their victories so far? Not even breaking a sweat."

"What are you saying, brother?" Thor snapped, standing up, sending his chair flying back to the floor in his haste. "Many good people died today. Our new friend lost someone important to him!" he pointed at Pollack who still sat with horror frozen on his face.

Loki leaned back in his chair, looking at Thor and then at Bruce. "Until now you've had the control of your communications, true? Your… eyes in the sky?"

"Yes," Bruce frowned.

"You've been tracking the enemies, trading information between countries, planning attacks… Did it ever occur to you that such surveillance was not beneficial to the Chitauri?"

"Of course," Natasha snapped. "That is why we assumed they would have taken out those routes of communication when they first arrived."

"Well, there you have it," Loki spread his hands.

Clint frowned, fiddling with his bow the same way he always did when Loki got on his nerves – which was all the time. "When you want to cripple your enemy, you put out their eyes," he mused slowly, as if carefully adjusting each word in its place. "They didn't do this. Why? To toy with us?"

"To use it," Steve felt it snap into place. He wanted to spend a moment mourning those they had just lost – but their deaths shouldn't be in vain. "What is the likelihood they left us with our communications and satellites for a reason? Could they have watched us watching them the whole time? Our eyes becoming theirs?"

"There is no sign of that," Selvig started.

"They just hacked into multiple Helicarriers almost simultaneously," Fury's voice silenced the rest of them. "They did so with speed which suggests they may have infiltrated our systems before, or had gained access to it without our notice. There is no possibility they didn't notice our satellites when they arrived."

"Why now? Why was this a good time to strike when they had let things be for so long?" Steve mused. It didn't seem like any better a time than any other.

"Perhaps our arrival frightened them," Thor suggested.

Steve glanced at Loki for confirmation. Part of the time he wasn't certain whether Loki actually had insight at their enemy or if he merely had a sharp mind. He would take either of the two right now.

Loki pursed his lips. "Perhaps… Our arrival may have been unexpected and forced them to move their plans forward. Either that, or it was simply time for them to make their next move. This makes it more difficult for S.H.I.E.L.D. to maneuver, yes?"

"It slows us down, but it won't cripple us," Fury straightened himself, looking at the far wall with a distant expression. "We need to make sure that our lines of communication are safe. Whatever their plan, we won't feed them information of our movements; we'll shoot down the satellites ourselves if we must."

There was resolve in Fury's voice, as well as a deep hurt; a mounting guilt of all the lives they had lost until now and an ugly doubt raising its head; how many of those had been in vain, caused by their own carelessness?

_to be continued…_


	11. Chapter 10: Rescue

This chapter comes with art by **Imaan** (**insteadofdeath**):

i198 . photobucket . c0m /albums/aa49/Del_Rion/Fan%20fiction%20pics/Avengers%20-%20Iron%20Man%20fan%20fiction/arc-c10janedarcybyImaaninsteadof death . png

* * *

**Chapter 10: Rescue**

* * *

"Jane! Come on!"

Darcy's voice was urgent but Jane had a hard time deciding whether it was just anxiousness or an 'Oh-my-God-we're-gonna-die-if-we-don't-leave-right-now' kind of thing. These days it was hard to tell.

The day the space ships arrived and were broadcasted all over the news, Erik had called and told them to stay cautious and safe until they got to a S.H.I.E.L.D. base. They had been working towards the one he said to be the closest, but the roads had been hard to travel, they got robbed a few times and by the time they got on location, the base was more or less a smoking crater.

Darcy had been ready to fall apart then, citing a dozen alien invasion movies Jane had never seen or cared for. They had been hungry, dirty and bruised, clinging to their last belongings – which in Jane's case were her life's work crammed into a notebook and a laptop she wouldn't let out of her sight. It had been hard to choose what to leave behind at her shop in New Mexico.

It wasn't that hard to see what they really needed right now, and what wasn't significant anymore.

After the base they had decided to make their way towards Erik – or perhaps the Avengers – on their own, which meant heading to New York City in hopes of reaching them. The world was falling to chaos. Roads were blocked, towns abandoned, riots and gang wars ravaging cites where people holed up in any space they could find and just attempted to survive. The laws were changing towards the survival of the fittest and Jane found that regardless of how hard it had been in the beginning, she was getting better at it.

She was currently hotwiring them a car which they hopefully would manage to hold onto this time; they had almost gotten shot the last time they fought to keep their means of transportation. Darcy, after they were back to moving on foot, said she would have never let those assholes take their car if she'd still had her taser.

Jane knew they couldn't tase the entire world, though, and two women on their own was a target some deemed easy.

She wasn't going to be easy when someone next tried their luck.

The engine sputtered but didn't start. She swore and dug deeper, getting a better hold of the wires. She heard Darcy shift nervously at the door of the garage, a lookout checking for trouble. The house was empty, long abandoned and raided, but it didn't mean they wouldn't catch someone's attention.

Jane had never thought she would try to steal someone's car. Well, she hadn't thought of a lot of things she had done once the aliens attacked, or that she had such a survival's instinct. But between living and curling up to die, she knew which she preferred, and the few news clips she had seen showed her the humanity was fighting back and maybe she could help once they reached someone who could get them to S.H.I.E.L.D. and Erik Selvig.

And Thor…

She had expected him to return by now, to find them, to make her feel safe for the first time since they left New Mexico. He hadn't come, though, and until he did, she and Darcy would be on their own.

The engine roared into life, loud in the silence and she slammed the hood down. "Get in," she called out to Darcy. The younger woman slipped in quickly as Jane took the wheel. She accelerated out of the garage and into the street, not seeing anyone but in the distance there were fires burning.

"Just keep driving," Darcy said, looking out, leaning forward as if that would help her spot any danger. "This time we won't stop until we run out of gas, right?"

Prior to almost getting shot because someone wanted their car, they had lost another of their vehicles because they stopped to help a family abandoned by the side of the road, one of their kids injured. Apparently their attempts to help hadn't been enough because the family stole their car and a bag of food they had managed to gather.

"We won't stop," Jane agreed, turning left. It would be a longer road out of the city but on the right an entire intersection had collapsed and making the error of driving there was a sure way to get ambushed; when people relied on maps rather than current situation, they could be exploited. That, too, Jane had learned the hard way during the last few weeks. "Try to get some sleep," she told Darcy once the buildings were further away and open road lay ahead. "I'll wake you up when I get tired."

Darcy nodded, curling up slightly on the seat and falling asleep almost immediately. At first it had been hard to sleep, the fear too fresh and the horrors they saw every day burned to their minds. The fear was still there but they were also too tired to dismiss a chance to rest.

Jane weaved past abandoned cars and wreckages, not stopping to check for supplies or survivors. If you wanted to live you had to be selfish, because no one was going to return your kindness. The weak and the honorable died first, she had learned that. It wasn't like in the films and stories. There were no heroes out here, just people who didn't want to die.

She looked at a road sign and tried to memorize any facilities that might lie nearby, a target for the aliens and thus a potential hazard zone. Every now and then she would see a glimpse of light around her: a car still burning, a camp fire or a smoking building a few miles from the road, a plane of some kind passing over them.

Darkness and being alone were good; it meant danger was less likely, yet it sometimes got to her. She reached out, fiddling with the settings of the radio. Nothing but a few scratches here and there. Every now and then she would catch news or some information circulating around, of alien sightings and new developments. The best sources of insight were CB radios, whenever they got a chance to listen to one.

It was close to dawn when Jane knew she needed a break and woke Darcy up. They parked for a brief moment when it looked like it was safe, switched places and kept going. Jane fell asleep quickly, clutching her bag, dreaming only vaguely of a sense of danger until she woke up without feeling all that refreshed.

"The tank's almost empty," Darcy said when Jane stirred and shifted on the seat.

Jane nodded and looked around. A sign passed them, slightly bent but standing. "There's a gas station ahead. If we make it there…"

"You think there's something in the pumps?" Darcy asked skeptically. As soon as the situation was clear and everyone everywhere was in danger, people had harvested whatever they could get their hands on and gasoline was one of them. Jane didn't envy the drivers of the last fuel trucks.

"We can either check it out or start walking right away," she mused.

The tank emptied itself before they got to the station and since they would walk past it anyway, they decided to take a look. Once they could see the place they sat in waiting for hours, making sure the place was abandoned. It was one of those middle-of-nowhere stations that time hadn't touched for a long time, small and less glamorous than the truck stops of the modern world.

"Let's go," Jane decided and they slid out of hiding, walking over to the building. All the while they were ready to run away, to throw themselves down on the ground should someone attack them, yet there was no sign of anyone in the area. It was kind of ironic how man was still man's worst enemy even during an alien invasion.

The valve of the underground tank was broken and Jane knew from experience it had been sucked dry long before they arrived. Behind her Darcy was moving to peer into the building, then slid in, perhaps deciding there was no one there. Jane followed her with a cautious look over her shoulder.

A smell in the air suggested a body and she saw a shape of a man slumped behind a shelf. Maybe the owner or someone who had sought shelter and never left. Maybe a visitor like them…

"There's no food," Darcy complained. "There's nothing at all."

She really shouldn't have been that surprised, seeing as remote places like this were easy to rob with no law enforcement for miles to try and stop them. Not that they had seen any cops for days. Then again, they hadn't been to more than one big city and soob decided they would avoid them until they got to New York.

Of course New York City had been subjected to radiation fallout so Jane wasn't sure if they would actually get into the city. There was bound to be someone there, though, to stop them and who could guide them to S.H.I.E.L.D.

"Hey, I found a phone!" Darcy suddenly called out from behind the register.

Jane ran over, taking a look. They had been pushed under the table, dirty but looking operational; a pre-paid phone, wrapped and ready to use. There were also a few SIM cards.

"If we get reception, we can call someone," Darcy grinned.

It was a long shot, but Jane knew it was worth a try.

* * *

In the midst of arriving to Midgard and finding out how truly in danger they all were, Thor had almost forgotten about Jane Foster.

Almost.

When the Helicarriers were destroyed and he witnessed the pain of the young man Benjamin Pollack, a new ally to the Avengers, he was reminded of what he should have thought the moment they came to Earth: he had not seen Jane yet. Erik Selvig had told him he last spoke to Jane before the mecha-creatures descended and that when S.H.I.E.L.D. troops finally arrived to her home at New Mexico, she was long gone.

Thor was confident she was alive. Jane was resourceful and smart. A fear gripped him, though, and he might have gone out searching for her had he known were to begin. If anything happened to her, he would readily blame himself, yet for the time being he vowed each and every member of S.H.I.E.L.D. to try and find her.

Perhaps that was why Maria Hill approached her on one morning as he ate breakfast. "We just received a call. Jane Foster has been found. She's in Missouri. Apparently she had memorized a few of Dr. Selvig's numbers and –"

Thor was already on his feet, grinning, and clapped her shoulder. "I thank you," he smiled at her and started out of the room. "Now tell me which way this Missouri lies."

"We're preparing a Quinjet," Agent Hill hurried after him. "War Machine is already on his way to her, to make sure the call wasn't intercepted by anyone."

"The Chitauri, you mean?" Thor's mood darkened at once. His fingers tightened around a handle that he wasn't currently holding, yet his will was making Mjolnir tremble in his quarters. He had been, however, asked not to summon the hammer while indoors, due to the damages it would cause, so he did not.

"Yes," the agent agreed tersely. After the enemy had penetrated S.H.I.E.L.D.'s flying ships, no one trusted what they could or could not do, or whether they had any interest in their remaining means of communications.

"Tell the Machine of War that we shall join him soon," Thor said as he went to get his armor and gather his friends. He was going to see Jane soon and make sure she stayed safe from now on.

* * *

"Do you think it worked?" Darcy asked. They were seated on top of a RV that someone had managed to park about three miles from the nearest road. It had three of its tires missing and looked like no one had stayed in it for years. Higher than the rest of the landscape, it was a good vantage point.

Jane pursed her lips. She had tried all the numbers Erik had given her, whether they were in her memory or in her notebook. Finally one of them had connected and after many strange conversations, she had been talking to someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. She had managed to give little else than her name and possible location before the reception was lost and the battery died soon after. "I hope so," she finally sighed, hanging her legs over the edge of the RV's roof.

It had been a couple hours since the call, far as she could tell. The time felt like forever when they were uncertain what was happening – if anything at all.

A rumble reached their ears, first distant but coming steadily closer. Darcy glanced up warily, pushing hair back from her face to minimize any obstructions in her vision. Jane did the same, searching the skies. The clouds blocked most of the view, making her feel uncertain.

"Maybe we should hide," Darcy started.

"Yeah," Jane agreed. They hadn't seen any actual aliens themselves but it wasn't a good time to start when help might be on the way. As Darcy began to lower herself to the ground, Jane kept a steady watch, wanting to make the other woman go faster but knowing a broken ankle was something neither of them needed.

A glimpse caught his eye, piercing the cover of clouds, catching the sun before turning. Whatever it was, it was small and fast, turning slightly and aiming towards them.

"Go, go!" Jane shouted to Darcy who dropped to the ground, sprawling into the dust then climbing onto her feet. Jane followed her, landing roughly, her ankle flaring with pain but it wasn't bad, just a jar reminding her why exactly she had wanted Darcy to be careful in the first place.

"Where should we go?" Darcy asked. "What is it?"

"I don't know and I don't want to find out," Jane started, looking around, knowing that wherever they ran, the thing on the sky would spot them. "Inside," she decided and Darcy slid in through an open door of the RV, crouching low on the dirty floor, trying to see something through the dusty windows. Jane follower her, attempting to close the door but it was stuck in place, the hinges rusty and bent in wrong angles.

A roar passed over them, rattling a few items on the table, then a cloud of dust appeared as the gleaming shape landed on the ground in front of the RV. Jane ducked her head, Darcy doing the same, looks passing between them.

"Do you think its one of them?" Darcy asked in a whisper, no doubt meaning a mecha they had seen in a few news reports. "I thought they were bigger."

Jane had thought so too but if some of them were big, why couldn't there be smaller ones?

Footsteps approached the RV, making them jump. They were human in pace but sounded heavier and mechanical. They huddled closer together, looking for an out but there was only one door and suddenly there was a shadow landing across the floor; the thing was coming around towards the open doorway.

Jane looked for something to use as a weapon – anything that wouldn't make her feel so small and fragile.

A mechanical hand reached in, curling around the edge of the door, denting it and almost tearing off a piece. Darcy shifted backwards, eyes wide, panting breaths too loud in the silence.

"Jane Foster?" a voice called out. It was human although coming through some kind of filter.

"Why does it know your name?" Darcy hissed, even more alarmed now.

"I am Colonel James Rhodes with the U.S. Air Force, also known as War Machine. I'm here to protect you until the Avengers arrive to bring you in safety."

It was like the weight of the world had been taken from her shoulders and Jane crawled up to her feet, brushing off dust until she realized neither of them had showered since leaving home at New Mexico. Darcy also got up, although a bit hesitantly, then both of them moved towards the door.

Outside stood a man in an advanced piece of armor. It automatically reminded Jane of Iron Man, although with grayish colors and more bulk; heavily weaponized where Tony Stark's had been sleek. The red, glowing eyes and arc reactor met them and War Machine stepped away from the doorway, giving them a little room. Jane stepped out, trying not to seem cautious, Darcy following her in much the same manner.

"Are you unhurt?" War Machine asked.

"You could say that," Jane nodded carefully. "It's been a rough couple of weeks."

It was hard to tell what the facial response of the man inside the suit was, but he didn't argue. Instead he turned his head slightly, as if studying something normal eyes couldn't see and silence stretched between them.

"Cool armor," Darcy finally piped up.

The helmet's red eyes were directed towards her. "Thanks," came a rather strained reply.

"Does it get hot in there?" she went on and Jane tried not to smile. Maybe Darcy was really curious or just striking up a conversation to keep them occupied. It had been just the two of them for so long that they both needed a little outside communication.

Jane thought she heard something like sigh before War Machine spoke up again: "It has a built in ventilation, so no, it isn't hot, Ms. Lewis."

"You know my name, too?" Darcy jumped a bit.

Another sigh and then a face-plate popped up, showing them the man inside. James Rhodes' dark brown eyes and skin went rather well with the gray of the suit although his build wasn't wide like War Machine's. "Yes," he noted, voice no longer filtered by the suit. "We've all been looking for you and I was given a full update on who you are when I was sent to secure your location."

"Secure it from what?" Jane and Darcy asked as one.

"If we're lucky, the Chitauri," the man replied.

"And if we're unlucky?" Darcy pressed, looking nervous. "I'm not sure I'm feeling lucky."

"If we're unlucky, it will be a mecha." He looked around again, keeping the faceplate up. "Have you seen any of them in the area?"

"A… mecha? What is that?" Jane had to ask.

Rhodes looked at them again, narrowing his eyes just slightly. "Those big-ass robots that have been doing the heavy lifting for the Chitauri."

"We saw those on TV before we left New Mexico, and a few times after," Jane told him. "We haven't seen one in person."

There was a blink and a small huff which may have been one of disbelief or relief. "You've been fortunate."

"I wouldn't put it exactly like that," Jane argued. "Have you seen what's going on out there? The people are tearing each other apart."

Something like repressed shame and anger crossed the man's face. "We're fighting a war, Ms. Foster. If we had the resources and the manpower, we would keep this under control." Jane wondered if he would just leave them standing here after he said that.

"The war's not going very well, is it?" Darcy asked.

"No, it's not," the man admitted then cocked his head. "They're here."

"The Chitauri?" Darcy looked up jerkily, moving a bit closer to Jane. By now they had both realized that neither of them wanted to die alone; being left alone was the worst that could happen in this situation so they were adamant to stay together.

"No," a small, calming smile appeared on James Rhodes' lips. "The Avengers."

A dark plane cut through the clouds. It wasn't any type of aircraft Jane had seen before but it looked human as it circled the area, dropping lower then finally landed a safe distance from the RV. No sooner had the aircraft touched down than a familiar figure strode out, cape floating behind him as he ran closer. Jane couldn't believe it and raced towards him, pulled into a firm embrace when she finally reached Thor, pressed against his chest tightly.

"Jane," he murmured. "I was so worried." He let her far enough to look at her, then smiled at Darcy who was approaching beside Rhodes. "I thank you, War Machine, for keeping them safe."

"There was nothing to keep them safe from, but we shouldn't believe that will be the case for long," the dark-skinned man replied and looked around again, appearing nervous.

"Darcy," Thor smiled at the younger woman and pulled her into a one-armed embrace while still holding onto Jane, as if afraid they would disappear if he let go.

"You still look like… you," Darcy smirked.

"I wager you would like a warm shower and clean clothes," another voice cut in and Jane looked up to find a man in a blue uniform coming closer, red and white coloring it; Captain America.

"Food would be nice, too," Darcy smiled bashfully then peered at Thor again, whispering: "Your friend is kind of hot."

"It is warm out here, indeed," Thor replied.

Jane smiled and leaned against Thor's shoulder, feeling safe for the first time since Erik called them. Which reminded him… "How is Erik? Is he okay?" she asked.

"Dr. Selvig is waiting in a safe location. He's looking forward to seeing you again," Captain America replied.

A woman appeared from inside the aircraft. "We have incoming. A mecha."

"Get into the air," Rhodes ordered, snapping his faceplate shut. "I've got this."

"Just distract it and then follow us," Captain America ordered. "Save it for the next battle."

War Machine nodded and fell silent.

"I can assist our comrade," Thor offered.

"Only if you need to; we came here for Ms. Foster and Ms. Lewis and getting them to safety is our first priority. Stay with them."

Thor nodded and ushered them towards the plane. Inside were the pilot and another man who was tapping on a tablet. As they all sat down and the aircraft took off, Jane took a look around then landed on the man who looked too much like a scientist to be present on such a mission. He looked up, as if noticing them for the first time and shifted his glasses. "You're Jane, correct?"

Jane nodded.

"Bruce Banner," the man introduced himself but didn't extend his hand, instead focusing on the screen again. "Clint!" he shouted towards the pilot then, "put that pedal down. It's getting closer and while Rhodes can slow it down, I don't want to see whether the mecha has new tricks up its sleeve today."

"You just don't want to tear those new pants," the only other woman present said in what had to be half a joke.

"That, too," Bruce Banner shrugged. "I like these pants. Who's to say that in the coming days we won't run out of pants, seeing as almost all factories around the world are shut down?"

The female Avenger considered this then tensed and put a finger to her ear, shifting the red hair out of the way. "We have visual. It noticed us."

A screen came to life on the wall, a feed from above, perhaps a satellite. Everyone gathered closer to it and Jane and Darcy followed. Thor's strong arm came around her, steadying her as the aircraft seemed to speed up.

On the ground moved something that looked almost like a metal human, only when you realized the scale it was in, the thing was enormous. Another screen showed them in dots and one between them – War Machine.

"Rhodes' going to engage," the pilot told them.

"He knows what he's doing," Banner said in the general direction of Captain America, whose eyes seemed worried as he looked at the screen.

"I think we've already established he can't take one of those things out," the Captain replied.

"No, but his repulsors have had more impact than most of our weaponry combined," Banner replied.

"Weren't you supposed to look into that?" the pilot asked from the front.

"I was and I am," the man snapped. "Unless we get a sample, it's all theoretical."

"Then perhaps we should procure you this sample," Thor noted. "Between the two of us, we could defeat this metal beast."

Banner pursed his lips then sighed. "We're removed from the civilian population. We could try…"

"We have orders," Captain America argued.

"Steve, you know we need a piece of that tech to analyze it," Banner insisted. "We're bashing our heads against the wall right now, have been for weeks, and we're ready to snap. Not just this team or S.H. .D., but the humanity."

It was clear Captain America – Steve – didn't like it but determination came over his face. "Clint, take us around. Thor, get your hammer. Natasha, Clint and I will keep Ms. Foster and Ms. Lewis safe. Bruce, you better get out of those pants."

Bruce Banner smiled tiredly and put the tablet to a safe place then started undoing his shirt. The aircraft tilted and turned around, giving them a clear view a moment later of the robot that had been following them.

"Is this a good idea?" Darcy asked.

"No, ma'am," Captain America replied, "but Dr. Banner is right; we need a piece of that."

"And how exactly are you going to get that piece?" Jane asked, alarm in her voice. On the side Thor had lifted his hammer, Mjolnir, from the floor and had a rather determined look on his face. Like the time he almost killed himself to save everyone in Puente Antiguo.

"With brute force," Banner replied and shed his shirt, standing there only in his pants. He looked rather bashful for a moment, then craned his neck to get a better look at the enemy before them as the pilot took them lower. "Stay in the air, in a safe distance. I'm sure Thor and I can take it from here." With that a hatch on the back of the aircraft begun to open and Thor stepped over to Jane as wind began to whip around them.

"You will be safe here. The Avengers will protect you and I will return shortly," he promised.

"You had better," Jane told him, then felt his lips against hers, too brief and pulling back when she was just getting into it.

Bruce Banner had stepped over to the hatch, peering down then shaking his head. He undid his pants and threw them to the side, standing naked several hundred feet above the ground, and when Thor walked over to him, touching his shoulder briefly, it looked like the most natural thing.

"I don't get it," Darcy mumbled, staring.

"You will," the red-headed woman, Natasha, promised.

Thor jumped off and was soon flying across the air with Mjolnir in hand. The naked scientist followed him but he didn't fly. Jane was so shocked she didn't even have time to cry in alarm, and seeing as no one else did, maybe it was a good thing.

The pilot turned them around and kept hovering in the air, with a perfect view on unfolding events. The rest of them gathered around to see out of the wide front windows. Jane could see Thor and his red cape, War Machine with the red beams of energy trailing behind him, and then something green was moving on the ground, straight at the robot.

"Is that the Hulk?" Darcy pointed.

"Yeah," the pilot said then grimaced. "I'm just saying, even if the humanity runs out of pants, let's make sure he doesn't. The man deserves to wear pants."

Natasha gently cuffed him on the head then all of them followed the events, hopeful of the outcome yet clearly it wasn't a sure victory and Jane felt a different kind of fear in the pit of her stomach.

* * *

Rhodey had learned that things changed fast when with the Avengers. One minute they were here to find two women and bring them in, and the next they were determined to tear a piece off a mecha. They had tried before, prior to Thor's arrival, but it had never ended well. Right now there was just this one, no Chitauri in sight, and it was a perfect opportunity although they hadn't planned for it.

Which meant seizing the opportunity and going for it.

Thor and the Hulk joined him in the attempt to take down the machine. They didn't have time to agree on a plan – not that any plan was definite when the green rage monster was involved. "Hulk smashes metal giant!" was as good a plan as any, seeing as the Hulk's declaration was perfectly in synch with their actual aim. As the green beast launched itself up, Rhodey watched, waiting for the mecha's response.

The Hulk landed, tearing at the chest of the robot, pounding and trying to dig in for purchase and actual damage. The metal skin began to glow, charging up. Rhodey knew from experience it would be enough to throw the Hulk back and really hurt him. Instead of remembering that or anticipating it, the Hulk didn't relent, perhaps thinking this time he would be stronger.

Rhodey aimed and sent a repulsor blast that hit right next to where the Hulk was hanging on, not hurting the mecha but disrupting the energy build-up, giving the Hulk a little extra time.

Then Thor came swooping in and threw his hammer. The mecha tried to dodge, taking a hit in the shoulder. The metal twisted and sparked. Mjolnir flew back to Thor's hand and Rhodey knew the Asgardian was preparing for another strike. To join him in his efforts, Rhodey aimed the Minigun on his back and fired. Bullets hit the metallic surface, bouncing off it, leaving only minimal scratches. The mecha shifted, as if trying to shake off the Hulk, the surface beginning to charge up again.

"Take it," Rhodey muttered, activating the chest RT, aiming and then firing the robot in the chest, as close to the Hulk as he dared. At first it felt like it was working, that maybe the charge was being pushed back, but then the usual bluish tint changed into red and Rhodey felt a current run through him, brief like an electric shock. The suit powered down and he fell, disoriented and waiting for the impact.

Something grabbed him, tangling him like a toy, then Rhodey felt the gravity again and ended up lying on something solid, hopefully the ground. He couldn't see anything, nor could he hear anything for that matter. The suit wasn't coming back on, leaving him imprisoned inside it. He could either wait and hope for a reboot – or do for the emergency latches and let himself out.

He struggled to move, feeling the weight of the suit, going for the helmet first, figuring that if he popped the faceplate he might see something at least without leaving himself completely open to an attack.

When he managed that, dust was sprayed all over him, covering his face and forcing him to close his eyes before he felt the draft pass and dared to open them again. Thor hovering above him, looking up, cape majestic as it flapped behind him. Rhodey could see the mecha, too, towering over them with what looked like claw marks on its chest. The Hulk wasn't there anymore, though.

The machine stepped forward, striking out. Thor flew out to meet it, drabbing an arm, summoning lightning from a previously sunny sky which was suddenly turning very stormy. It hit the hammer and the moved onto the mecha, yet instead of frying it from the inside the machine seemed to embrace the shock, drawing it into itself then unleashing some of it and sending Thor flying across the air.

Rhodey could see how this was going to end very badly; the robot only needed to step on him and he might get crushed inside the armor like a snail in its shell.

However, the mecha turned and walked away, its injured shoulder still sparking, a mark of victory although it hadn't led anywhere.

It seemed like forever before Rhodey got himself out of the suit and into the open. By that time the Quinjet had landed and the Avengers had spilled out. Bruce Banner was back to himself, disoriented yet someone had put his pants back on. Thor's hair was floating in every direction and he kept muttering and glaring at the sandy ground. Rhodey felt the same; they had been so much closer this time. If only his chest RT had worked…

Rhodey looked at the suit, seeing the repulsors smoking faintly. He knew that couldn't be good, but then, it had been only been a matter of time before the armor took a serious hit and there was no one left to fix it.

_to be continued…_


	12. Chapter 11: The Return of JARVIS

**Chapter 11: The Return of J.A.R.V.I.S.**

* * *

They stood around a table in a lab that was situated a few hundred feet below ground level. It had been used for something different before S.H.I.E.L.D. took over it several years ago, Rhodey had been told, and now housed one of the last fully functional labs that were on the ground and not on the last Helicarrier.

"I'm sorry, Colonel Rhodes," the head scientist was saying. "We may be able to fix the damage done to the War Machine armor in time, when we understand the technology well enough, but the power source cannot be replicated by anything we're familiar with."

Somewhere behind him, Pepper sighed. Both of them knew that only Tony's intellect would save the suit at this point; without the arc reactor it was just a pile of very expensive metal.

"So the arc reactor is dead?" Rhodey asked for a second time, just to be sure.

"Whatever the mecha did to it seemed to drain the power," Banner noted from the side, looking at the readings the scientists had pulled from the suit; this might not be his area of expertise but none of them got to complain about that with people dying all around them, leaving shoes to be filled.

"Why didn't they do that before?" Fury asked.

"Yeah, I want to know that, too," Rhodey nodded.

"Could be it adapted for the first time," Banner frowned at the screen then turned to them, playing with his glasses by tugging them off and touching one of the arms to his lips. "It has been clear the repulsors' energy sequence, for whatever reason, has been putting them off. Maybe this is the first time they could respond to it."

"So we just lost our only advantage?" Fury asked and sighed with annoyance. "If we can't fix the armor we have to move on, think of something else. Use what we have."

"There might be a spare," Pepper spoke up then stepped forward. "Tony may have had a spare. The first thing we should do is look around the Stark Tower at Manhattan. The building's still standing and a small group might be able to get in with me."

"I cannot send you out to a war zone, Ms. Potts," Fury declined at once.

"I helped design the building," Pepper was unfazed. "If someone's going to find anything there and navigate the building unnoticed, it is I and whoever I choose to take with me."

They stared at each other steadily for a long moment.

It was clear from the beginning who was going to win this one.

* * *

**Stark Tower,  
Manhattan, NYC, NY, USA**

"I still can't believe you handed Director Fury's his balls," Happy Hogan chuckled.

"I have a way with men who believe they're in control," Pepper replied. She smiled then checked the particle detector in the sleeve of her protective suit. "Radiation levels are not alarming," she noted. "Don't take any risks, though."

They waded through the dark underground space; S.H.I.E.L.D.'s protective unit had guided them that far and were keeping watch. Thor and his friends were at the ready further away should a mecha make an appearance, yet so far there had been no sign of one.

It was quiet. They kept their lights dim, not wanting to call attention upon themselves. Rhodey was leading the way, looking small out of the armor yet Pepper knew not to count him out just because of that. Even as an airman Rhodey had more training than either herself or Happy and that was one reason why he was here.

Another was that he should be allowed to find a way to bring War Machine back to life so that he could put the armor back on and help make a difference in the decaying world.

To actually be back on Manhattan had been like entering a movie set of a disaster film; broken windows, partially collapsed buildings, fires that had burned themselves out days ago; empty streets and an unnatural silence that seemed to stretch out endlessly in every direction. If there was anyone left alive in the city, they were deep in hiding.

They found the stairs and started climbing, hoping they would find unblocked paths all the way to where Tony's workshop and Stark Tower armory had been. It hadn't been finished, none of it, but there might be something left. Perhaps parts for a spare suit, or even the Mark VI he had used just before the battle with the Chitauri; all that Pepper had put away and never looked at it again, like his workshop at Malibu.

Now she would have to go and find them, letting go of the pain and moving on, taking anything they could find as a last gift from the man who had left them too soon.

Those memories were a partial reason why Happy was with them; Pepper could trust him with her life and he had been through this with her. She wasn't blind to the changes in their relationship and knew it had started to evolve a long time ago. In the middle of all this they hadn't said the words but they both knew that with the world that might end tomorrow, they could be selfish and not spend the time they had left apart.

"Was this building always so tall?" Rhodey grunted and stopped on a floor that was as dark as everything else. It appeared almost untouched yet Pepper knew not to go exploring for supplies. She needed a break and wordlessly thanked Rhodey for the small respite. Happy found a chair from the next room and brought it back, allowing Pepper to sit down. Rhodey snorted but said nothing, and perhaps it was just the trick of their lights or he was smiling.

They rested for a moment then begun climbing again, passing floor after floor and it felt like an endless climb in semi-darkness.

"You didn't seem too impressed by our Asgardian allies," Rhodey spoke out during their third break.

"Oh, I'm sufficiently impressed. They are, after all, from another world and Thor is supposedly a god," Pepper replied, itching to push back an errand strand of hair from her face but the residual radiation made her want to keep the protective suit on. At least they hadn't been forced to make the climb in full hazmat gear of she would have demanded they fly her upstairs.

Rhodey nodded, looking around, then returned his gaze to her. "I've seen how you look at Loki," he deadpanned, calling her bluff.

"Well, I've seen the way you look at him, too," Pepper shot back.

There was a strained silence.

"He's responsible for Tony's death," Happy commented from between them. "How are we supposed to look at him?"

_Exactly_, Pepper thought.

"The other Avengers aren't thrilled about it either," Rhodey mused. "Yet Rogers said that as long as Loki can offer us something, he's less of a liability."

"He's insane and untrustworthy," Pepper noted. "Read one book of Norse mythology and you have a perfect analysis of his nature. Who's to say that he's not working with the Chitauri right now?"

"He seemed rather bent on the idea that if the Chitauri win, he's going to be toast," Rhodey recalled. "No matter how much a messed up Norse god, I say he was genuinely afraid. He doesn't want us to lose this war, or at least he doesn't want to be here when it happens, yet here he is, thanks to Thor."

"Let's hope that's enough motivation for him," Happy agreed dourly.

"I don't care if they take him," Pepper told both men and stood up from where she had been resting her feet on the floor. "We lost Tony because of him." Loki had opened the portal over Manhattan – over Stark Tower – and it was Loki who kept Pepper from ever saying goodbye to the man she had loved. Had she picked up that call… She hadn't, though, but it didn't lessen Loki's quilt – or his punishment in the end. Pepper wanted to believe he would pay for his crimes eventually.

"We're almost there," she went on, leading the way to the stairs and Rhodey took the lead once more.

Up there more windows were broken, wind howling through the gaps, curtains fluttering and long-forgotten papers moving across surfaces. The night had turned into early morning and the sun would be up soon. If it looked like there was activity, they would spend the day hidden in the building then exit when it was safe once more. They had radio but they would only communicate if necessary, not knowing if the mecha would be able to track the signal.

No one trusted the technology in their hands after the Helicarriers went down.

"Here it is," Pepper pointed at the door leading to one of the top floors and Rhodey and Happy opened it by force. It looked like a hurricane had been through there, pieces of furniture all over the place, broken and scattered. She looked around, wondering if the Chitauri had already been here. It was entirely possible yet the other floors had appeared untouched.

Maybe they had known what to look for.

They searched every inch, every upturned cabinet and broken shelf. Moving from one room to the next, they systematically browsed every surface for anything useful. There wasn't much. Broken pieces of tech long left alone, fragments of notes, tools and abandoned circuit boards. Certainly there was no arc reactor just waiting for them.

Pepper sighed. It hadn't been a sure thing to begin with but after the long climb she had been hopeful there would be _something_ at least.

A flash caught her eye, brief and small. She imagined it was a glimpse of the others' lights in a reflective surface then turned towards a doorway next to her. She heard a sound, suddenly – something that had been absent in the whole building and which seemed loud although being barely above a whisper.

A machine.

She frowned and looked further, waving her light then pointing it at the floor. The sound intensified slightly without her moving and she saw a blink once again. Stepping further in, Pepper entered a room and looked around. Nothing. Perhaps just a trick of her eyes.

"Pepper?"

"Over here," she replied and Happy soon emerged in the doorway, Rhodey behind him.

"We found nothing," Happy said, disappointment marking his words. "Any luck?"

"No, although I thought I… Can you hear that?" she asked and they all fell silent.

"They told us they would call if a mecha was approaching," Rhodey started.

"It's not coming from the outside," Happy shook his head and looked around, moving his flashlight from side to side along the narrow, long room that had only one door and no windows. Just a lot of processors and empty screens.

"I saw a light blink at least twice," Pepper told them, not feeling so foolish now that they could hear the sound as well.

Rhodey also pushed into the room, looking around, keeping his light lowered towards the floor just like Pepper's was. "I can't see anything."

Happy lowered his light too, still watching for a source of light or the continuous sound. "There's no power in the building. There's no power in the city unless someone has a generator. The arc reactor was disengaged when the attacks begun, so there's no way –"

There was a blink of light, just a flicker, then one of the screen came to life. Pepper had no idea what the screen was saying, bits of data being processed too fast for her to follow. Rhodey stepped forward, cautiously, looking at the screen but appearing just as confused as the rest of them. "Is that possible?" he frowned.

"Maybe there's a back-up power," Pepper mused. Tony would install one, but why would it be active right now, after all this time? What kind of battery lasted for years?

The screen suddenly froze and went blank. Several more lights appeared on the processors.

_"Data transfer completed,"_ a voice announced, then everything went dark in a heartbeat.

Pepper gasped, pressing a hand to her mouth although the suit prevented her from actually finishing the gesture of shock.

"That was J.A.R.V.I.S.," Happy was the next to react.

It felt impossible, seeing as the AI had shut itself down years ago. There hadn't been a peep since, not when they had needed J.A.R.V.I.S. or when the AI had been likely to offer input. Yet here, in the abandoned building with no power, J.A.R.V.I.S. had emerged and had clearly been doing something.

"Data transfer?" Rhodey snapped out of it. "What data – and where was J.A.R.V.I.S. transferring it?"

_to be continued…_


	13. Chapter 12: Taste of Irony

This chapter comes with art by **Imaan** (**insteasdofdeath**):

i198 . photobucket . c0m /albums/aa49/Del_Rion/Fan%20fiction%20pics/Avengers%20-%20Iron%20Man%20fan%20fiction/art-c12erikselvigbyImaaninsteado fdeath . png

* * *

**Chapter 12: Taste of Irony**

* * *

Fandral peered down over the side of the building, one foot raised on the ledge, wind playing with his blond hair.

Erik Selvig chuckled inside the strange suit which he had said protected him from the lingering radiation in the air. "Your friends look very out of place," the scientist noted.

Thor smiled. "And you would look very out of place at our home, my friend."

Erik nodded then focused on the technology he had brought with him. He was gathering some kind of information while they waited for the three Midgardians to search the Stark Tower which towered above the rest of the buildings like a long-forgotten landmark. It had survived remarkably well in the middle of all the destruction.

Sif stood by Thor's side, searching the skyline then looking to their right; Loki was pacing the rooftop, appearing agitated.

"What troubles you, brother?" Thor called out to him.

"Lower your voice!" Loki hissed then looked around. "We are standing here, out in the open; _that_ troubles me."

"There is no danger within miles!" Volstagg announced. "No food, either," his voice dropped to a mutter.

"I did not promise you food during this journey," Thor reminded the bulky warrior. "I do love Midgardian food, though. It's a pity we cannot partake in it on its fullest."

Volstagg merely grunted in disapproval and walked off to the other side to make sure once again that they were alone. Loki cast him a look then continued pacing.

Hogun watched it all unfold, sitting on top of some structure, weapon in his lap. The dark eyes followed Loki's progress from one spot to another in wry amusement. When Loki passed him a moment later, the Trickster shot him a gloomy look and resumed his endless journey, constantly moving his eyes over the landscape, seeking for trouble.

"He's making me nervous," Erik commented then focused on his work again.

"Loki, please," Thor pleaded. "No harm will come to you."

Loki sneered at his words and continued to prowl.

Fandral let out a small chuckle then suddenly cut it off – at the same time as Hogun raised his head and became very still. "Did you feel that?" Fandral asked. He leaned slightly away from the edge yet remained as he was, looking back and forth between buildings. The sun was climbing up, giving them more light.

"I felt it," Hogun agreed, sliding off his seat, shifting his hold on the handle of the morning star.

Loki had also stopped, standing rigid, face frozen. He turned back towards Thor with an accusation on his lips but Thor had no time for that; he whirled around, raising Mjolnir and tried to see if there was an enemy approaching. "I cannot see anything."

Erik peered up from his work then quickly begun to pack it away. "The kind you cannot see is the one you should beware," he said and Thor wondered if he was citing some old Midgardian wisdom.

"We have the high ground; it must show itself before an attack," Thor decided.

"As soon as it comes from around one of those other buildings," Sif put a dent on his plan. "It will give us very little time to react."

Thor swung Mjolnir, making his decision; he took off to the air, soaring higher above the tall building, getting a better look at their surroundings. He distantly heard Loki shout insults at him for compromising their position but if there was an enemy to be fought, Thor would not hide.

He saw it a few streets down; one of the mecha, yet this was slightly darker in color and bigger as far as he could tell, almost half the time taller than the average machines they had seen. The remaining windows shook around it, some of them falling apart and crashing down to the empty street. The side of the machine brushed against a side of the building and it began to bow and crumble, giving in under the pressure, huge pieces falling at the mecha's feet as it continued steadily towards them.

Thor was tempted to strike it, to give it a taste of his lightning, yet he knew better than to do that. He had been counter-struck too often for his tastes and would not give his enemy a weapon to use against himself.

"Protect Erik Selvig!" he called down to the others.

The mecha was moving closer, its head slightly raised, watching Thor as he floated in the air. Brandishing the hammer, Thor prepared to strike, for no mechanic being could withstand the might of Mjolnir –

It charged forward while he was preparing himself, moving its body smoothly between buildings, the tail appearing as an extension of its spine. Thor watched the mecha, alarmed by this sudden change of pace. Then the machine jumped slightly, turning its side forward – and tackled the building Thor's friends were still standing on.

The building creaked in protest at the impact, dust puffing into the early morning air, glass shattering and concrete breaking. The entire structure began to fall over, weight carrying pillars giving in, floors collapsing on each other and Thor watched in horror as the others tried to hold onto something.

With a cry of outrage he attached, aiming for the mecha's head, yet it ducked at the last moment, diving against the lower half of the building and Thor went crashing through walls until his momentum stopped and he found himself being crushed between the floor and ceiling as the building kept falling on top of him. He couldn't hear the others, didn't know whether they had found safety; all was covered by the thunderous sound of the elements being crushed and he grasped Mjolnir tighter, starting to fight his way through.

By the time he emerged from the midst of stone and concrete, most of the building had collapsed. Pieces were still coming down through the dust that floated everywhere, blocking his nose and making breathing highly unpleasant. Thor stepped forward then begun to swing Mjolnir over his head, allowing the wind to push the dust away and give him a clearer view.

He spotted movement and rushed over, finding Sif's shield and soon the warrior herself, trapped under a piece of rock. He lifted it off her then looked for the others. A bruised Volstagg soon appeared, helping an injured Hogun along. Thor acknowledged them then looked around still, finally catching a hint of gold and green, hurrying over. He found both Loki and Fandral, covered in dust. "You are well?"

"We are alive," Fandral agreed with a rough voice.

"Where is Erik Selvig?" Thor asked.

Loki pointed. Thor followed the gesture and saw a glimpse of a man amongst broken pillars. He wasn't moving and Thor could tell he was gone before he reached him. "I tried protecting him but his mortal form was slow and weak," Fandral said in an apologetic voice."

"We barely survived. He never had a chance," Loki added with venom in his voice.

Thor growled, unhappy with this, unable to just accept the loss yet as he looked at the old man's bloodied face he knew it to be true; he had left them alone, arrogantly trying to attack the beast when all the mecha needed to do was destroy the building – something they were known to do very well – and then simply wait. Thor couldn't have helped them all even if he tried.

The stones trembled on the ground and he heard the thundering steps resume. The building lurched and shifted, a piece of a wall sliding to the ground with a deafening sound. The mecha emerged, towering above them, its dark metal unscathed and gleaming.

Fandral and Loki were on their feet by the time the mecha looked down at them, letting out a grating, metallic growl.

"Prepare for battle!" Thor roared. "Our friend shall not go unavenged!"

The mecha responded by trying to step on them. Loki and Fandral dove to one side while Thor went the other way, rolling on the ground then back to his feet, swinging and releasing Mjolnir at the beast. It hit and was then pushed back as a slash of energy appeared on the hard, dark skin. Thor would not give in so easily, however; he had made a dent on these things before and he would do it again.

Above him the mechanical creature stopped then bowed forward slightly, its tail slowly moving from side to side through the air. Its chest seemed to heave and then open, like a hatch, and something dropped out of it, sleek and dark, falling on top of a crushed mound of the building, remaining there on all fours.

This shape was very human-like, not much bigger either. It raised its bowed head, shining eyes regarding Thor, then its body unfolded and it stood there like a miniature mecha, clawed feet digging into the crushed stone, fingers curling and uncurling almost restlessly.

"Is this a new trick?" Fandral asked.

Thor just shifted the hammer in his hand and waited.

The small mecha's hand twitched, just slightly, and the bigger one came back to life, moving towards the others, its tail cutting through another building and sending pieces of it tumbling down. Thor heard Sif call out, saw them taking cover, realizing they might be more gravely injured from the fall than he had realized earlier. "Loki, take Fandral and help them. I shall deal with this one and join you shortly."

The other two left and the mini-mecha cocked its head slightly, then something like a long, curved blade seemed to emerge from its arm, extending past the tips of its fingers. A weapon no doubt.

Thor smiled and charged. He was done waiting. He struck out yet his opponent moved to the side, narrowly missing Mjolnir's power. It moved behind him, cutting through his cape with the blade. Thor turned with a yell, almost catching it again as the mini-mecha bowed down.

He suddenly felt pain cut through his leg and found the clawed fingers digging into his thigh, the arm with the blade coming up towards his stomach. Thor slammed his hammer against the side of the creature, sending it tumbling to the side. He went after it as it rolled back to its feet then charged. It slammed against him, almost as if to an embrace and Thor struck it, hard as he could, feeling the metal bend slightly yet not enough.

Something like a chuckle reached Thor's ears and then he felt a pain slash through his side as the mini-mecha's blade sunk in, tearing through his armor with brutal force. With an effort he tore the creature off him, doubling in pain. The blade retracted, dripping with his blood, disappearing back to its forearm and the mini-mecha stood still in front of him, as if gloating.

"We are not done yet," Thor vowed, grasping for Mjolnir which he had dropped while fighting to free himself of the deadly embrace. The ground trembled and suddenly the giant mecha was back, standing over them both. Thor briefly wondered where Sif and the Warriors Three were – then something was dumped on the ground between him and his opponent. "Loki!" he hissed. His brother was unconscious yet alive, his chest still moving, color on his face.

Thor moved to stand straight, to attack, before an impossible weight landed on top if him. He looked up at the mecha, its weight crushing him, the ground breaking beneath his body. The miniature one moved then, bowing down to grab Loki by the front of his clothes, lifting him up slightly then dragging him along as it began to walk away. Thor struggled to breathe, to gain leverage, his injuries paining him yet he could not let them take Loki.

His world blackened steadily and then he felt no more, the taste of blood in his mouth mixing with the bitterness of defeat.

* * *

Loki came to with pain radiating all over his body, yet he was alive.

He recalled the mecha approaching and throwing itself against the tall building they had taken as their poorly chosen vantage point. The building had doubled and fallen, taking them with it. Erik Selvig had been dead before he hit the ground, most likely.

It served Thor right, to have his pet being crushed like an ant while Thor presumed to fend off this enemy on his own, leaving the rest of them to survive the outcome. On the ground the mecha had come at them again. Hogun had been too badly hurt to battle and the rest of them were not much better. Loki had held off the creature as long as he could, his magic weakening him and finally he told the others to go and hide in an already collapsed building, should the creature think them gone or dead.

He had not calculated the odds that the mecha would grab him, throw him through another building and then, apparently, bring him along.

When he awoke he could not see the others – only the small mecha-like creature that had emerged from the bigger one standing over him. Its giant version hovered behind it, like a tower, still as only a machine could be.

Loki tried raising himself, knowing he needed to escape. From the mecha it was only a short way to the Chitauri and their threats were still fresh in his mind after all this time. Their terms had been clear and although the defeat had not been his alone, he knew they would not see it his way.

"You understand you failed your task, Loki Layfeyson," the mini-mecha suddenly spoke.

Loki froze. He hadn't known the mecha were capable of speech, or perhaps it was only the small one. No mouth moved as it spoke but the sound clearly came from the creature of dark metal. "My quarrel is not with you," Loki offered.

"The Other gave you very specific instructions," the mecha went on, coming forward, bending down on one knee next to him, staring at Loki's face with eyes that were no eyes at all, just glowing windows to nothing. "Your punishment will be severe when I deliver you to him."

"There is no need for that. Whatever he is giving you, I can make a better offer," Loki promised.

"What he is giving me is _orders_," the mecha noted, the distorted voice carrying an undertone of annoyance.

"So you are nothing but a servant," Loki kept on prodding.

"You do not understand what I am – nor do you need to." Above them, a hum approached. Loki had no delusions it wasn't one of the alien ships. He thought of trying magic, to teleport himself anywhere but here, but the small mecha grabbed him by the throat and straightened up, holding him in the air. "How… ironic," it mused, tilting its head as the Chitauri ship emerged from the clouds above them.

Loki's eyes widened slightly in new-found realization and gutting fear.

_to be continued…_


	14. Chapter 13: Questions

**Chapter 13: Questions**

* * *

Bruce stared intently at the slowly rotating holographic image of a mecha. It flickered every now and then, the power output not as balanced as what the machine required but as long as it maintained the image, Bruce was going to keep it there. Compiled data sat on screens around him, on printed and handwritten notes on the desk and none of it took him to that comfortable zone where he knew he was in control.

Far from it.

"Anything new?" Fury asked, walking in.

Benjamin Pollack raised his head in alarm at his sudden appearance and the other Avengers present directed their attention at the man. Rhodey, Pepper and Happy were still at the Stark Tower, although they should be on their way back by now. Thor and his Asgardian allies had volunteered to protected them should something to wrong and Erik Selvig had tagged along to take some readings from the Manhattan area.

"Nothing definitive," Bruce replied to Fury's question. "I've been working on profiling the mecha and might have noticed a few things we've been ignoring or dismissing previously. Of course we've gained more information during the latest confrontations and know more about them than we used to."

"They're machines," Clint shot from the side, brow furrowed as he was working on adjusting his bow. "They don't have a character to profile."

"That's not entirely true," Bruce pointed out and gained the archer's undivided attention. Before, we've gathered that they are resilient, we've only begun to skirt their limitations and they are incredible adaptable to most attacks we design against them. What we haven't really bothered to observe before is that they are sentient. It's not just incredible programming but they're actually learning and cleverly use the knowledge they've gained."

"So basically they have a mind of their own?" Steve clarified.

"Yes," Bruce nodded. "With the possibility of advanced mechanics from another world…"

"We haven't actually gotten a look at their mechanics yet," Benjamin argued. "Could be they're not that advanced at all, but we can't pierce through the surface to be sure about that."

"Entirely possible," Bruce admitted, looking at the holograph again. "However, I think that between their own sentient minds, they also have a hive mind of sorts; one reason we haven't recovered even a single piece of them is because they protect each other and take away their injured. Seeing as we're at a disadvantage as long as we don't understand them, that is incredibly ingenious."

"So they have each other's backs. Nice," Clint grunted, disappointed. "Is there anything in there we can exploit?"

Before Bruce could give him good news, because there really wasn't any, the door opened and Pepper led in a group of people who looked like they had just gone through a battlefield. Happy and Rhodey flanked her, followed by Sif who looked like she may have actually belonged to medical.

"What happened?" Fury asked.

"A mecha attacked them," Rhodey volunteered to explain. "Dr. Selvig's dead and Loki was apparently taken. Thor's gravely injured as were his Asgardian friends." He glanced at Sif to imply he included her in that list despite her standing there.

The warrior lady nodded. "We were unprepared to meet the giant machine, and could not protect Erik Selvig."

A hush took over the room, then a roar rose from the hallway and Thor burst in, half-dressed, blood all over his chest and side, his hair wild. "We must go after Loki!"

"Hold on," Steve rose and went over to him, steadying the wounded man. "What happened?"

Thor's eyes sought the room wildly then rested on the mecha's holographic image. "There was something else," he pointed at it. "A smaller one. It stabbed me then ran like a coward, taking my brother with it."

"Thor, you must calm down," Sif insisted. "You were almost crushed beneath the mecha, you must return to the healers."

"A small one? What do you mean?" Bruce asked before anyone could try to take Thor anywhere.

"Human sized, tiny compared to the monstrous machine it emerged from," Thor described, trying to wrench himself free but both Steve and Sif were holding tightly onto him. "We must go after them. Erik Selvig is dead and they have my brother."

"We brought back the body," Rhodey said quietly.

"Did you find what you were looking for at the Tower?" Natasha asked, voice unaffected by all of this but that didn't mean she didn't feel saddened at the loss or perplexed by the discovery of a new type of mecha.

"No," Rhodey replied.

"We found something else," Pepper cut him off before he could say anything else, or before anyone else could speak.

"Something else?" Bruce frowned.

"We're not even sure what it was," Rhodey turned to talk to Pepper.

"You saw it – you heard him!" Pepper insisted then turned back to the room at large. "We heard J.A.R.V.I.S."

A different kind of silence filled the room.

"Who's J.A.R.V.I.S.?" Benjamin asked.

"Is that strange?" Clint frowned. "You were at Tony's workshop, right?"

"J.A.R.V.I.S. shut down just weeks after Tony died," Happy spoke up. "He hasn't been active since then, in any shape or form. Also, the entire Tower was without power but something in that room had to be working in order for us to see and hear what we did."

"What did he say?" Bruce asked, amazed that no one else had done it by now.

"He said that a data transfer was completed," Rhodey recalled.

"Could it be a burst from when he was still around? A late discharge of energy?" Natasha guessed.

"J.A.R.V.I.S. was the most intelligent AI on the planet," Pepper replied. "If he shut himself down, he would remain shut down. If he powered back up again…" She seemed thoughtful, hopeful almost. Happy stepped closer to her and placed an arm around her in silent support.

"Whatever it means," Rhodey went on, "we didn't find an arc reactor lying around. Hearing the voice – whatever it was – got me thinking, though; there is one place we might find an arc reactor for War Machine. Malibu."

Banner saw Fury shift his stance, considering this. "We've received intel from California ever since you left there. It's been completely controlled by the Chitauri since their first attack." He turned towards a nearest screen and brought up an image. "However, if you're determined to go there, this is something I want to know more about." In the picture a space ship hovered over the ocean, near the coast. It was large and slightly different in design from the other Chitauri ships they had seen.

"I saw that the day you pulled me out," Rhodey frowned. "It was parked at that same spot. What is it?"

"We don't know, but images suggest mecha activity on that area is higher than anywhere else," Fury said.

"Why haven't we heard of this before?" Steve asked.

"Because I wasn't going to send you to a mecha hotspot when we had no idea how to fight them," Fury snapped.

"We don't know how to fight them now," Clint observed, studying the image.

"It could be a repair ship," Benjamin suggested.

"True," Bruce agreed. "If the mecha are keeping it safe, it's important somehow. They're safeguarding the area to keep their nest safe, should you want to call it that."

"We should take a closer look at it," Clint agreed.

"What about Loki?" Thor thundered. He looked ready to collapse and was leaning heavily on Steve.

"If the Chitauri have him, he could be anywhere," Fury retorted. "We can't help him."

Thor growled, stepping forward towards the Director, almost collapsing. Sif and Steve held him from falling and eventually dragged him out of the room. Thor was still protesting and swearing vengeance.

"So, we're going to Malibu," Bruce finally sighed. "Do we know if Tony's home is still standing?"

"We haven't gotten images from that area since we lost California," Fury told him.

"What?" Rhodey exclaimed. "You just showed us a picture of the ship."

"That place is a gray zone, centered around Malibu area. Our satellites get nothing but static there and that picture of the ship is one of the rare ones we've gathered from the area," Fury explained.

"They're hiding something," Natasha commented needlessly. "There's something they don't want us to see."

"Might be just the ship; the gray area covers that as well. Or maybe it's something else," Fury observed. "I trust you'll bring me answers as to why our satellites can't see what's in there."

"Either they're throwing interference at us," Benjamin mused, "or our satellites have been compromised from day one."

Bruce didn't want to say it, but he suspected it might be the latter. It would explain how the Chitauri attacked the Helicarriers in the end, at the moment of their own choosing. It would explain a lot of things indeed.

* * *

Sif and the Warriors Three were all mending. Earth's healing practices were different from Asgardian methods but they helped.

No remedies eased the ache in Thor's chest and he looked once again at Jane, curled up in a chair by his bed, and Darcy who was doing to same in hers. They had already heard of Erik Selvig's fate when they arrived and they had both cried. Thor had shed tears as well, thinking of how unworthy an ending it had been to such a man.

Anger bubbled inside him, at his own weakness and arrogance. He had presumed to defeat the enemy and left his friends vulnerable. A price had been paid and he would carry it with him always.

Thor's thoughts turned to Loki. His brother had been alive when the small mecha took him, dragging him away. To the Chitauri, no doubt, and to an end Loki had feared ever since his defeat. Thor had wanted to keep him safe while allowing his brother to redeem himself, yet now both chances were lost if he couldn't find him in time.

"Hey," Steve's voice called from the door and Thor watched Captain and Bruce step in. "Feeling better?" their leader went on, voice low to not disturb the resting women.

Thor nodded. "Is there a plan?"

"We are going to Malibu," Steve replied. "It's a long way and we must proceed with caution. We don't know what awaits us but many mecha had been detected in the area. That's something everyone agrees on, regardless of the source of information."

Thor nodded again. "I will join you, of course," he promised then thought back to his most recent meeting. "I do not fully understand how the mecha function, but it seemed as if the small one may have controlled the giant – and my brother was dropped at the small one's feet like a prize or an offering."

Bruce looked thoughtful. "That's… interesting. I wish we had more data, but perhaps there is, after all, another consciousness at work, controlling the mecha. Or perhaps the two are both sentient and simply communicate with each other." He reached for his glasses and observed them intently. "We may find out more if we get to Malibu."

"We will," Steve reassured him then looked at Thor. "Rest. We need to prepare and I need you with us, Thor."

"You will have me," Thor promised.

The two men left and Jane stirred a moment later, belatedly. "Was someone here?" she mused.

"Captain and Banner," Thor replied, smiling at her sadly.

"What did they want?" Darcy asked, awake as well. Both of them had gained strange sleeping habits while traveling to them. Jane had said sleeping on the road had been dangerous and Thor felt regret whenever he thought they had been left alone like that, to fend for themselves. They had survived, however, every bit as clever and strong as he knew they could be.

"We are going to Malibu, to seek for answers and perhaps find a new power source for War Machine," Thor recalled.

Jane nodded. "I'll come with you."

Thor thought to deny her, but after almost losing her and having lost Erik Selvig… "I will keep you safe," he promised. She smiled at him.

Darcy bit her lip, looking uncertain and almost ashamed. "You don't have to come," Jane told her. "We understand if you would rather stay here."

"I don't want to look like a coward," Darcy bit out, a look of conflict on her face.

"No one will think you a coward, and someone needs to remain here and keep the fight going," Jane reassured her. Thor couldn't have felt prouder of her.

Darcy smiled weakly and nodded. "Just promise to come back."

"I promise," Thor said – and he did. No power in the world would take Jane from her, and they had lost too many good people in this war already. It was time to find the means to end it.

_to be continued…_


	15. Chapter 14: Malibu

**Chapter 14: Malibu**

* * *

If they could have taken a Quinjet and flown cross-country, the trip wouldn't have taken long at all. However, when planning on entering enemy territory undetected – especially when said territory was shielded from their eyes – they needed to go unseen the entire way, not just the last few feet.

It was fitting that the first road trip of Steve's life took him across a war-ravaged, post-apocalyptic landscape where they had to avoid both other people and their enemies; the people would want to take their vehicles and the enemies wanted them dead.

Desperation was making people turn on each other and after his initial protestation that Jane Foster join them on this trip, he was glad she had come because she knew how to navigate the small roads, avoid traps and keep them moving. Clearly she had done this before, not too long ago.

"They won't care that you used to be heroes. Well, most of them won't," she explained. "When they see you have supplies, they will attack. They might come to realize the error of doing so too late but we can't afford to get into fights, right?"

"Right," Steve agreed. Getting shot by a random stranger desiring a can of food he had in his possession wasn't the way Steve envisioned this trip ending, plus it would slow them down and possibly cripple them before they even reached the West Coast.

Besides Jane, the Avengers had been joined by Rhodey, who was there to find a new arc reactor or two for his suit. He was a welcome addition and a trustworthy ally. Pepper had come as well, insisting she could navigate their surroundings in Malibu better than anyone, no matter its current condition. Happy had of course come because Pepper was coming. Thor's friends had joined them as well, some of them still healing just as the God of Thunder himself was, but they assured him they would be ready for battle when the time came.

"Asgardians can take more than what those metal monstrosities can offer!" Volstagg had boasted.

Yet even their loud bravado quieted as they drove through the lifeless and destroyed areas. Entire cities abandoned, corpses on the side of the road or in vehicles. Some of them curled together as if they had died like that, seeking protection and nearness. Men, women and children…

Steve realized, more firmly than before, that if they didn't save the Earth soon, there would be nothing left to save. It wasn't just a figure of speech anymore.

They had limited connection to the rest of the world as they traveled but Jane and Natasha worked on communications in the back of one van, occasionally getting Bruce's input. The news didn't change much; battles were fought, resistance mounting around the globe. Most of the world's governments had fallen apart, seeking refuge and leaving their people to fend for themselves when armed forces were trampled to the ground. In some places, once defeated the people were left to their own devices but as soon as a prominent threat arose, the Chitauri dealt with it – or the mecha did. As long as humanity stayed down, hiding and groveling, they were of little interest to the invaders, but as soon as someone showed the knowledge, means or the guts to defy them, they were taken out.

S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarriers had been the first step. After that things had gotten worse, bases destroyed and countless lives lost that had ensured that some kind of defense was still possible.

They were running out of time and allies.

Steve knew it was a harsh reality and as much as he hoped for it, they might not be able to protect the entire planet with just the few of them left. If they gained one victory, they couldn't hold their ground and battle somewhere else at the same time. Something had to give. Perhaps Fury knew that, too, and he had unrealistic hopes that whatever was in Malibu would help them turn this war around.

* * *

When they reached Utah, they started avoiding open roads as much as possible. From time to time they saw other people and working vehicles, all of them headed somewhere else – most of them away from where they were going.

They didn't see Chitauri or mecha, but that didn't mean they weren't around.

Once they reached California, they scouted ahead, leaving half the people with the cars and the other half checking out their surroundings, moving forward only when they were certain it was safe.

"We would be quicker going on foot," Clint mused.

"If we find something salvageable in Malibu, we don't want to have to carry them back to the vehicles across half the state," Bruce noted.

"Or find that our transportation has been stolen," Jane added.

They advanced, painfully slowly, but when they finally reached their destination and hid the cars, it felt almost surreal. The ocean glittered in late sunlight, the sky blue and clouds white. The sun was setting, sinking into the horizon and Clint just stared. Of course, it was just as easy to stare at the huge circular space ship hovering over the water, almost directly in line with Stark's Malibu estate.

"I didn't think the place was still standing," Rhodey mused. They were hidden in the trees nearby, wearing protective gear that potentially hid their vital signs from mecha – something Bruce had thought would delay their discovery. As it was, two mecha seemed to be standing either on the beach or in the shallow water, looking like they were just dozing and enjoying the rays of the sun.

Clint hoped he could just blow their heads off but his arrows hadn't done that before and he knew they wouldn't do it now either.

He directed his gaze at the buildings before them. They looked almost whole, with only a couple windows broken and some scratches; not even a crumbled wall in sight. "Do we have a way in that doesn't include us getting seen?" he asked.

"There's a back exit near the tree-line," Pepper said. "It's more like a maintenance shaft. A tight squeeze for some of us but we should be able to get down to the workshop through it."

"A maintenance shaft," Clint frowned.

"Tony was an engineer," Rhodey noted. "Trust me, a maintenance shaft was necessary with all the things he kept building underground. Plus it was a good, cool place to put some of the electronics, I think."

"Show me," Clint ordered and Pepper took him a bit off to the side and pointed. Clint nodded then told the others to wait while he went to search for the fastest point of entry. He was nearly in line with the door – more like a hatch – when the ground begun to tremble. He froze and waited, crouching low in the underbrush. A giant form moved above him, each step like a small earthquake; another mecha. This one was bigger, darker in color, striding towards the house. Clint expected it to jump down to join the others at sea-level but instead it stopped and knelt above the building. It remained there, down on one knee, one hand touching the ground and the other resting on the bent knee, much like a human would. Its head bowed and it stayed like that, still and quiet as if it hadn't just been moving.

Clint eventually moved back to the others, who hadn't missed the action.

"This is the mecha we battled in New York," Sif said.

"It's bigger," Steve noted.

"Did you see the small mecha by any chance?" Bruce asked Clint as he joined them.

"No, but that thing is practically sitting on top of the house we were just contemplating on entering," he replied.

"What a strange place to choose, although I guess this cliff offers a clear line of sight to the hovering ship," Jane mused. The bulk of the mecha almost blocked their view of the circular space ship. The house also resided on the highest point of the immediate vicinity, the cliff it was built on thrusting slightly out towards the sea, so maybe that's why the mecha had chosen this location. Clint might have done the same.

"We have to get in there," Rhodey said.

"The plan hasn't changed," Steve reassured him.

"It hasn't?" Clint blinked. He would go in if that was the plan but he didn't have to like it.

Steve nodded. "We just have to be really quiet."

For whatever reason, all of them turned to look at the Asgardians, many of which weren't exactly known for their stealth approach to any situation.

"What?" Volstagg asked, clearly noticing the pointed looks.

_to be continued…_


	16. Chapter 15: Revelation

**Chapter 15: Revelation**

* * *

The large, dark mecha didn't move, remaining above the building like a giant version of Rodin's _The Thinker_. They couldn't wait indefinitely and since the mecha showed no signs of life, they slowly made their way to the doorway. Steve and Clint went first with Natasha, opening it, then the rest of them hurried along.

Lady Sif, Warriors Three and Clint remained outside to keep watch and lead away a possible attack should they be discovered.

Rhodey had actually entered the house this way once; Tony had been drunk, refused to call Pepper and J.A.R.V.I.S., for whatever reason, hadn't let them into the house. They had muscled open the hatch that led to the maintenance shaft and Rhodey had been certain Tony was going to bend over to throw up at every other step.

He had demanded his own set of keys to the house soon after that.

They climbed down to garage level when an access point came across their path, distancing themselves from the mecha above them. Every little sound, gasp and sniff in the dusty, thick air seemed explosively loud, their lights too bright and every now and then they would stop to listen because they thought they'd heard something. With all these people in the narrow tunnel, it seemed even smaller than the first time and Rhodey, who had never been claustrophobic in his life, started to have difficulty breathing. Judging from the occasional wild-eyed looks from the others, he wasn't alone.

"We're almost there," Pepper finally whispered.

"Thank god," Rhodey replied.

Someone – perhaps Thor – chuckled.

"At least there was a way for us to slip in. Plan B was for someone to distract and lead away all the mecha into the surrounding area," Steve noted from the head of the group. How he – and Thor – even fit into the narrow tunnel was beyond Rhodey. It had to be hard for them to breathe.

"I prefer dark, narrow places to imminent threat of dying," Happy decided, his voice strained.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" Natasha teased.

"Left it in my other jacket."

"Focus," Steve commanded as they came to another door. It was thick and they had no idea what lay on the other side; debris, enemies, a ruined storage area…

People shifted around, letting Steve and Natasha work on opening the door. Their last resort was to let Thor smash it down with his magical hammer but that would be too loud and they didn't want to start a battle before they got any information at all – or got to see whether Tony's workshop would yield any needed parts and devices.

They finally maneuvered the lock release and carefully pulled the door open. Everyone stepped back when Steve and Natasha slid inside. The rest of them followed after the route was clear and found themselves in what looked like a storage area. It being Tony's storage area, it was bigger than most people's houses.

"The workshop is just over there," Pepper pointed.

Happy hovered near her, offering silent support. It had to be hard for her to come here like this. Rhodey, while having not spent as much time here as Pepper, felt nostalgia rattling around his head, yet it was as if their past lives had happened ages ago. Things that used to be important were far from significant now, although some memories persisted, worth more than everything else combined.

"Let's move," Rhodey said and pushed ahead of the others: another door, a short hallway and then they would be at the workshop…

There were sounds and lights coming from up ahead and Rhodey almost dropped his flashlight in his effort to turn it off quickly. Everyone else froze, waiting, darkness surrounding them. The sounds continued, steady and rhythmic, and it was almost like… music. Rhodey frowned then slowly moved forward, staying low, making as little noise as possible as he crossed the hallway. He was aware of the Avengers following him, Steve probably wanting to ask him to wait but not daring to make a noise.

The workshop was lit and music filled the space. Rhodey hadn't realized how long it had been since he had heard any music at all which wasn't made directly by a guitar, a beat on a hard surface and singing voices, and even those were rare. This was actual recorded music, however, coming from speakers and Rhodey felt almost transported back in time.

Steve had reached him and together they moved forward. A pile of debris rose before them, as if it had been just pushed there out of the way; pieces of wall, concrete, mechanical parts and maybe even a couple cars. They used it as a shelter as the others pushed forward behind them, cautious. Happy was holding a gun, as was Natasha; Thor's hand gripped his hammer. Steve adjusted his shield to pull out his own weapon and Rhodey did the same; guns might not make a difference against a mecha but Chitauri were another story if you knew where to aim.

The workshop was almost whole, Rhodey noticed as he craned his neck to look around; his view was limited but the room didn't seem to have gone through much. Well, that wasn't entirely true; it seemed that instead of going through a demolition, its walls had been reinforced with crude pieces of metal, as if someone had been trying to hold the place together. The view towards the sea showed the round spaceship and a little bit of the two mecha on the beach, their shapes almost framing the view out to the ship.

Rhodey shifted slightly and noticed that not only were there lights and music but it seemed programs were running around the space either on physical screens or holographic displays. Just like before…

_"The adjustments have been completed as per your calculations, sir. They are compatible and I shall begin transferring the data to the Edwin unit."_

Rhodey almost broke the silence and heard Pepper gasp somewhere behind him. He looked over, seeing her silence herself with a hand on her mouth and the others giving her warning looks.

_"Parsing recovered data is nearing completion,"_ the familiar voice of J.A.R.V.I.S. continued.

Rhodey tried looking around but there was no-one in the room. He wondered if the AI could have gone insane, somehow finding a way to power itself – J.A.R.V.I.S. had had control over the arc reactors after all – and was now doing some project he thought Tony might have wanted him to complete.

He tried getting a better look at the holograms. Some of them looked like suit designs, only different. Maybe an alternative Iron Man armor Tony had been in the middle of…

The others pressed closer to him and Steve, wanting to see what was going on. Pepper's eyes were wide as she took in the surroundings. Rhodey almost missed a movement while focusing on her but turned in time to see a door open on the far side, a visible cloud of humid air escaping it, and through the doorway came Tony Stark, toweling his hair.

_to be continued…_


	17. Chapter 16: Perfume

**Chapter 16: Perfume**

* * *

Pepper almost screamed but someone pressed their hand firmly across her mouth, stifling the sound. Through the sweat and dirt that covered all of them, she smelled Happy's familiar scent.

On the other side of the room, Tony lifted his head, stopping for a moment, towel still in his hand. His eyes searched the space then glanced upwards as if expecting any possible noise to come from overheard. He resumed drying his hair, which stuck out in every direction the way it always did.

"Bring the schematics over to the main display," he spoke up. Pepper wasn't sure what she had expected but he sounded the same, the very same. The arc reactor still shone in his chest. His body might have been thinner and paler, new scars here and there, his face shaven and hair shorter, but it was unmistakably him, truly him…

Tony stepped over to a bigger display which showed something that may have been an Iron Man upgrade. She didn't care. The man she had loved and known for so many years – the man she had lost so suddenly – was right there and she could almost reach out and touch him!

The others seemed as shocked as she was, staring, wide-eyed and disbelieving.

"Integration is still problematic," Tony mused, cocking his head, holding his chin for a moment in a familiar, thoughtful look, fingers tapping restlessly. Soon enough he moved on, hanging the towel to dry on a robotic arm he used to have help him with the suit. He walked over to the wall, opening a cupboard and pulling out a pair of pants, sliding them on and then took a shirt from another shelf. For a moment he just held it in his hands then brought it to his face and inhaled, eyes closing briefly.

_"The new interface could help solve the integration instabilities,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke up.

"Mm," Tony huffed and pulled the shirt on. He turned then stopped as the whole room seemed to vibrate, dust falling from the ceiling. He glanced up, a frown on his face.

_"There seems to be a disturbance."_

"Apparently," Tony mused then walked over to the display, studying the image once again. "Take back ups to Edwin, just in case," he said then.

_"Done, sir."_

He nodded then lifted his head as a sound came from the corridor behind the hiding group. Pepper and everyone else looked behind them sharply, half-expecting some kind of enemy to appear but it was only Clint, moving towards them quickly. Natasha motioned furiously, to make him stop, but he crept all the way up to them.

"Something's going on topside," Clint whispered. "Chitauri arrived, with one of those small aircrafts, and the big mecha is twitching." His eyes then flew towards the lit area and widened significantly. He opened his mouth then shut it.

Pepper looked out towards the workshop and noticed Tony had taken several steps towards them, listening intently. The music had been turned off and the main display shut down, leaving only the smaller ones working.

A shuffling sound came from the direction of the stairs and Pepper craned her neck. Two Chitauri appeared, coming down from the main floor, entering through the doorway where there was no transparent wall anymore. Tony whirled to meet them and Pepper noticed something strange on his neck, disappearing under the shirt he was wearing. The Chitauri were making noises, gesturing, and Tony's body tensed. There were no human words involved but some kind of communication seemed to be passing between them.

Tony then gestured towards the stairs and one of the Chitauri stepped forward, reaching for him.

Something dropped from the ceiling and slammed the Chitauri down to the floor, hard, pinning it there. The attacker looked almost like a mecha, only much smaller. Its sleek black body was still as the Chitauri wriggled and eventually crawled away towards the stairs and the two of them left hurriedly.

"That is it," Thor whispered. "The miniature mecha I battled."

Hope shone in his blue eyes and Pepper wondered if he thought to find his brother here.

Another earthquake seemed to shake the building and Tony's shoulders heaved, then he turned towards them. "Shut down for now, J.A.R.V.I.S."

_"Of course, sir."_ The displays all flickered off and the room went quiet.

The small mecha straightened up and moved towards Tony, standing behind him like a silent guardian. Where it had left the ceiling was a hole, possibly leading to the upper floor. Pepper hadn't even noticed but she didn't blame herself, for she could hardly take her eyes off Tony, wanting to stop hiding, to greet him, to ask how he was here, alive.

Tony closed his eyes and inhaled deep and slow, a slight smile appearing on his lips. "You should stop wearing perfume when the world's ending, Pepper," he suddenly spoke up, lifted his head and looked towards the pile of rubble they had chosen as their hiding place.

Pepper looked at the others then waited no longer. Several hands grabbed for her but she pushed forward, climbing over the broken concrete and metal, finally able to see him properly, standing there. Tears filled her eyes, joy bursting painfully in her chest and Tony just looked at her, face closed off.

"Tony," she whispered, rushing to him, touching him. His skin was warm, so warm, and she reached up to kiss him.

His lips responded briefly before he pushed her away, hard. She stood there, dismayed, hearing the others come closer, revealing themselves.

"How are you here, my friend?" Thor asked.

"We saw you…" Steve started uncertainly.

Tony's face hardened visibly. Behind him the mecha shifted and Thor lifted his hammer, growling.

"I have others things to deal with, so let this be a warning," Tony started. "The next time we meet, I will destroy all of you."

"What?" Bruce stammered. "Tony, what's wrong?"

Something very unlike Tony passed over his face; it was an emotion Pepper had only seen on his worst days: absolute rage, disappointment and betrayal. "The Tony you knew is no more. I will let you leave here alive but it is my last sign of mercy. Next time, I will kill all of you."

His hand twitched and the mecha behind him came to life. It seemed to open from the chest, arms and legs, small mechanical parts unlinking from each other to reveal a hollow inside.

Pepper realized, belatedly, that it wasn't a robot; it was a suit.

Tony leaned back against it and it seemed to swallow him, locking around his body in a hard embrace. Tony's face remained visible the longest and something seemed to flicker in front of his eyes, like a screen, although it could have been a trick of the light before the mecha's face closed around his features and only glowing eyes stared back at them. It then braced its body and jumped, crawling across the ceiling and out through the hole in it, disappearing.

Everyone stood in shocked silence, staring after it. Pepper felt faint and had never been so glad for Happy's presence when he wrapped a firm arm around her.

"Was that really him?" Steve mused.

"It had to be," Bruce replied but sounded uncertain. "Something's very wrong."

"He tried to kill me," Thor uttered, looking down at himself, where Pepper had seen a gaping wound after his last battle with the two mecha.

"Guess he wasn't joking about destroying us," Clint said, sounding choked. He hadn't even reached for an arrow, which was very unlike him.

"I refuse to accept this," Steve finally snapped out of it.

Pepper nodded jerkily and looked to the side. "J.A.R.V.I.S., are you there? If you are, please answer."

_"I am here, Miss Potts. It is good to see you alive and well."_

"I guess not everyone wants to kill us, then," Natasha muttered.

"What is wrong with Tony? It is Tony, right?" She dreaded the answer, but she believed J.A.R.V.I.S. would know the difference.

_"It is Mr. Stark, indeed. I have verified this, although…"_

"Although what?" Rhodey pressed.

_"He has been compromised."_

"What do you mean, 'compromised'?" Pepper asked, feeling sick. "You mean he's working with the enemy?"

"Wait," Bruce interrupted and stepped forward, a look of intense focus on his face. "Has Tony been with the Chitauri from the beginning? When they arrived on Earth with their ships?"

_"Yes. Mr. Stark did not actually land on Earth with the first mecha, as you call them, and his first contact with me came only when the Asgardians arrived on Earth."_

"So it was you at the Stark Tower?" Happy asked.

_"I was downloading and transferring data from that location, yes, after Mr. Stark visited the city and provided that section of the building with the necessary amount of power to withdraw all necessary information."_

"What information?" Bruce questioned.

_"That I cannot tell you, Dr. Banner."_

"What is –"

Steve's question was cut off as a loud, metallic growl pierced the air and the building trembled. This time it didn't stop but went on. Clearly something was happening above them.

"What is that?" Pepper asked. "What is going on?"

_"It would seem the ship is under an attack. It must be defended,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S. noted.

"And Tony is helping to do that?" Bruce asked. "To defend it."

_"Yes,"_ the AI replied.

"How, exactly?" the scientist pressed, clearly onto something.

_"By controlling his creations – the mecha."_ J.A.R.V.I.S. paused for a moment. _"You must leave now. I'm sorry that we will not meet again, Miss Potts. It has been a pleasure knowing you, and I know you meant much to Mr. Stark once. All of you did."_

Pepper couldn't believe it, didn't understand – and refused to acknowledge the possibility that Tony had somehow turned against them. "No, you will tell me what is wrong with Tony so that we can help him! He would never hurt us willingly," she shouted.

Above, an explosion filled the air and Steve reflexively lifted his shield. "We have to go."

The sound of planes, perhaps fighters, cut through the air with a sharp boom that made her ears hurt.

"Pepper, come on," Happy urged. "We'll get answers –"

"The answers are all here!" she exclaimed. "We can't just leave him behind."

"We won't," Steve told her, voice taut as a string ready to snap, "but we can't help him if we stay down here. We have to get out of the building and see what is going on."

"Also," Rhodey interrupted loudly, pointing: on the walls, Iron Man armors were still lined up – and inside each of them shone an operational arc reactor. "Help me get them out, then we can go."

Thor and Natasha went to aid him while Pepper stepped over to a computer.

"J.A.R.V.I.S.?" she called out but the AI wouldn't answer. They were also locked out from using the computers and the room began to power down around them. The sounds of battle increased overheard and dust fell from the ceiling, along with a few panels.

"We need to leave!" Happy called out then grasped for Pepper's wrist. "Pepper, come on… We'll do him no good if we get buried alive in here." She had to agree, although with much resentment, and once the arc reactors were secure they rushed back the way they had come. Pepper knew she couldn't be the only one who dreaded what would happen next – and who wanted answers to explain Tony's behavior.

_to be continued…_


	18. Chapter 17: Genesis - The Fall of Tony S

**Chapter 17: Genesis –The Fall of Tony Stark**

* * *

**2012**

It wasn't the way Tony had thought he would go out. Sure, it was fast just like the way he had imagined – the speed, not the actual dying. Also, riding a nuke into space wasn't something ordinary people got to do.

Everything had happened so fast; one moment he was looking up at the portal and the next he was in the midst of darkness, the suit's alarms reacting a fraction too slow, confused by the sudden change in environment. The suit's power, already depleted in the aftermath of the prolonged battle, trickled out and Tony gasped, forcing himself to let go while he still could.

The call was disconnected.

J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice distorted into nothingness.

The HUD shut down.

He was alone and all he could do, frankly, was look on as the payload was delivered right onto their enemies' doorstep; the nuke continued its course, steady and unwavering – something Tony envied right now. He wished he had the same momentum to do what he was supposed to, but this had been the plan and it ended right here, with flashing inferno and a big bang.

Tony closed his eyes as the alien mothership succumbed to the explosion. He felt a slight pressure and imagined it might push him back but would it be enough to take him through the portal? Maybe if he came up with something, he could get the suit's power back on…

He was so tired, battered and bruised from the fight and the events before that. The mere idea of moving was becoming harder to grasp; floating was so much easier; breathing the warm, thin air as his mind began to drift. Tony guessed that if he fell asleep, he wouldn't have to stay awake as he suffocated and froze. It was a minimal comfort in his current situation but he guessed he had earned it, securing the Avengers' victory and all.

One thought away from just admitting he was giving up…

* * *

A sound…

It made him stir.

A scraping sound, his brain recognized.

Coming from close by, echoing, traveling up…

Tony forced his eyes open. They felt dry, burning and aching. His skull felt too tight around his brain. He tried to breathe and found his lungs constricting around nothing – or that's what it felt like. His entire body jerked, seizing, wanting air, needing it, and there wasn't nearly enough.

The scraping continued.

Tony tried to move, to fight off the darkness around him. His eyes searched for anything and briefly caught something like a flash of light. Where was he? He felt trapped, caught, pressed inward from all sides and he could smell –

The suit. He was still in the suit. Trapped inside it.

"J.A.R.V.I.S.?" he called out.

Nothing happened. No one responded – not before the scraping grew more insistent.

Tears slid freely from the corners of his eyes as he struggled to breathe, to draw in whatever air remained. It wasn't enough. It wouldn't be enough. If someone was out there, they were being too slow. Tony was about to tell them that, loud and ungratefully, but he didn't think he could get more than a pained sigh out of his throat.

He felt something yank on his head, forcing it backwards. Someone was trying to take the helmet off by force. He wanted to fight – or to help – but he couldn't move a muscle and he would instantly trade some of the clarity in his mind for the ability to _do_ something about his current situation.

The darkness in front of him moved, making him blink, then suddenly the dark was gone and there were shapes, cool air hitting his face. He opened his mouth to breathe, to fill his lungs – only to find there wasn't enough air, that he still felt like he was suffocating, breathing vapor although his eyes could see none.

A growl met his ears and he shifted his eyes, wide with the continuing panic. Was there something wrong with his lungs? Why couldn't he breathe?

His eyes landed on a gray face that looked like a lizard with half its features chewed off. He hadn't actually gotten this close and personal with the aliens before but he had gotten pretty good close-ups at the Chitauri to know he was looking at one – and it wasn't wearing its usual mask.

Whatever he wanted to do, he couldn't, because there just wasn't enough air and his brain was beginning to suffocate with the rest of his body, unable to maintain the necessary oxygen levels in his blood.

Tony's ears still registered sounds and the tugging on his body grew stronger. His eyes moved down, his vision blurred but seeing more of them – half a dozen Chitauri – crouched over him, foreign tools in hand.

Part of him wanted to somehow seal himself inside the suit and die alone in the dark.

Another part wished they would cut an artery as they tried to get the armor apart and give him a somewhat blissful exit from this world since one clearly hadn't been provided for him yet. He recalled thinking of dying before, as he watched the Chitauri be destroyed, but clearly he had missed a spot…

Clearly something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong.

His body jerked again, his jaw working, nostrils flaring as he fought to inhale any available air there was. He tasted something horribly poisonous in the back of his throat, his tongue felt swollen and something kept tugging at him. There was no pain, no blood – just strange screeching noises between the Chitauri and he wondered if they even understood he was dying.

Most likely they didn't care.

One of them stepped forward, hovering over him. This one looked different, even Tony's air-deprived brain could tell that. Something had happened to its skin, to its body, as if it had been cut, pieces removed and then sewn together with several different materials. One of its eyes also looked like it didn't belong to its alien skull, regarding him as it knelt on his armored chest. Tony couldn't feel the pressure but he smelled the creature as it leaned over his face.

One hand grabbed Tony's jaw, squeezing hard. What felt like fingers pressed into his cheeks, forcing his panting mouth to open further, uncomfortably wide, and he would have been crying from pain had there not already been wetness in his eyes from the continued feeling of suffocation.

The pressure increased. Tony wanted to scream – tried to scream – but as he had predicted the sound he produced was far from the desired effect. He felt something snap, or crack – a sickening crunch just below his ears and his jaw exploded with pain. He couldn't move it, not even if he wanted to, and the maimed Chitauri's hand reached forward. Tony's eyes briefly saw something in the inhuman grasp and then it disappeared past his line of sight.

He felt it, though, in his mouth, then his throat, pushing deep, too deep. His eyes squeezed shut as the alien pushed past his attempts to gag, to throw up, to swallow. He couldn't draw breath and then the pain in his jaw became secondary to the stab of agony deep in his throat. The Chitauri above him grunted, shifting its hand currently stuck painfully deep in Tony's throat, then moved the other one from his jaw to his throat and punched his windpipe.

Tony did scream this time, his entire body jerking in response to the mind-altering torture that very much rivaled the experience of being semi-conscious while his chest was being carved open. The hand was withdrawn but his jaw remained locked into place, possibly broken or dislocated at the very least. Tony blinked past the tears, gasping, then found he could actually breathe now. He tasted blood, felt it trickle down his throat, lower than from a bleeding in his mouth. Part of it burned like it was trickling down to his lungs, making his chest ache as he filled his lungs again, feeling a sort of euphoria take over him as the most extreme breath play of his life finally ended.

The air tasted wrong, though. He couldn't put a finger on it but it was the same as when he put the new arc reactor in his chest and tasted coconut and metal; it was there, he was sure of it, although its origin wasn't entirely clear to him. However, he was content to just let oxygen into his body and worry about the rest later.

His eyes closed and he needed to sleep, so very badly. His body felt even more sluggish with its renewed capacity for life, if that was even possible.

The tranquility didn't last for long; the tugging, scraping and snarling continued and the Chitauri on his chest moved away, gesturing at the others, letting out a series of strange sounds that made no sense but one of them handed the maimed one a tool of some kind and it lit up with a strange red light. If Tony had to take a wild guess at its purpose, it was an alien blow torch, the red end looking almost like a concentrated flame of some sort. Also, it was warm when it was brought closer and Tony tried to move, to inch away, but his body was still worn out from the shock and the armor was heavy without power.

The other Chitauri gathered close, some of them holding him down while two of them held up his right arm. The maimed one brought the torch closer and made contact with the armor. At first Tony felt nothing, then distant heat, then he roared with pain as it seared into his skin. The slight attempt for motion made his jaw ache all over again but didn't diminish the pain in his arm.

Seeing what it had done, the Chitauri who appeared to be in charge withdrew the tool, peered at him, seemed to re-examine the armor and then changed the spot. This time it stopped just night of burning another area of his skin and kept moving, kept looking for something and Tony prayed each time it paused that the heat wouldn't turn into a burn.

Sometimes it didn't.

Sometimes he wasn't so lucky.

Piece by piece the Chitauri managed to do what it wanted, which was undoing his armor. Tony, fortunately, began to space out at some point, from the pain and from hyperventilating, which whatever the mad scientist equivalent of the Chitauri was had done that his windpipe apparently couldn't accommodate.

Finally he lay there, wherever 'there' was, out of the armor and soaked in piss. Tony was fairly certain he had emptied his bladder somewhere between almost suffocating and having his jaw broken then getting something jammed down his throat that apparently restored his ability to breathe. He felt naked, he was cold, and he could smell burnt human skin. His own burnt skin, and it was more than a little accident at the lab.

The head Chitauri moved forward again, traveling twisted, crooked fingers over his body, stopping at the low shine of the arc reactor through the undersuit. As it continued upwards, thankfully, over his sore throat, throbbing jaw and wet face, the fingers almost petted his hair and Tony considered this a good time to pass out.

For once, his body promptly accepted the command it was given.

* * *

When Tony came to, he recalled why fainting in the hands of your enemy wasn't a good idea: it left you vulnerable.

Not that he honestly had any way of fighting back in his current state but he could have at least given the impression he was every inch the superhero he claimed to be.

He found himself lying naked on his stomach, hands laid out along his body. Everything from his bruised, swollen jaw down to his feet was pressed against the surface that after a small amount of scrutiny looked like a mess of tangled metal and wires trapping his body in a loose cocoon.

Since he wasn't actually tied down, Tony guessed he could try and move, perhaps see if he might get free, but simply attempting to move his tongue to lick his lips made him groan with pain; someone had snapped his mouth shut but that hadn't reset the jaw. Not entirely, anyway. Once he was aware of that, the pain started all over again and he tried to wriggle his arms up to at least touch the injury, but his prison was too tight for him to even properly wriggle.

His skin ached in several places, slowly registering in his brain. Burns; he recognized the sting. Some of them pressed painfully against the hard surface, probably bleeding. The air still tasted funny and it fucked up his sense of smell.

A shadow moved in the corner of his eye and he risked trying to move his head to see the source of it. Something immediately pressed at his cheek, unyielding and renewing the sensation of his jaw being forcibly pulled from its proper place. With tears in his eyes and something that could very well be blood clogging up his nose, he decided moving could wait till later. Much later. As far as his eyes could see, he was being held in place and no doubt whatever was framing his face was designed to keep him still.

Still for what?

He felt a hand touch him, strange texture against his skin. He felt fingers but they weren't human.

They weren't unfamiliar either.

The Chitauri from before was back, he knew it. Tony didn't need to see its mauled, strange features to know it, to know its touch. Well, none of the others had really touched him so it wasn't really a stretch. The fingers jumped, from his calf to his upper thigh. For a moment he wondered if this was going to end like one of those stories fueled by unresolved sexual desires but the fingers passed his ass, tracing the small of his back, moving up to his spine and dragging more slowly as if trying to savor every bump.

For whatever reason Tony was more afraid of that than the fingers actually stopping on his ass would have made him.

He wanted to whimper but held the sound back, both because of the soreness in his throat and the fact that he was still Iron Man, an Avenger, a champion of Earth. Even if he was going to be dissected alive he should at least go out with honor. With dignity. He should be brave.

The fingers traveled up to his neck and the hands gripped harder, adjusting something and Tony found his head being moved forward until his chin almost rested against his chest. The pain in his jaw wasn't as bad as he had thought it might be – mostly because whatever had been jammed in his throat felt like it was tearing through the walls of his esophagus and larynx both, at the same time, cutting off the air.

As if to soothe him, the fingers threaded through the back of his hair, their effect going unnoticed by him. The body in his peripheral vision moved slightly then he felt something sharp at the base of his skull. He tensed, trying to struggle again. The hand in his hair moved higher, tugging and then holding, making his scalp ache in a too-strong hold that threatened to tear the strands free of his skin. The sharp edge moved over his skin and for a moment he had a vision of being scalped, his hair and bloody skin being displayed as some kind of trophy by his enemies.

Instead he thought he saw a few of the dark strands falling down past his face and soon it was all over.

Tony felt like laughing. Were they giving him a haircut? Had he felt any gutsier he might have commented on the poor quality of customer service but refrained from doing that because he honestly didn't think he could actually open his mouth to speak.

The body of the Chitauri shifted, perhaps to leave him alone, allowing Tony to let out a sigh of relief – a sigh that hurt but he was willing to ignore that because he hadn't just lost the skin from around his skull.

He heard footsteps, something being moved, then saw the shape of the Chitauri return. Tony couldn't help the tension in his body, the dread, then felt something tighten around the back of his skull, as if the entire frame his head was being trapped in was shrinking. It stopped at something that was highly uncomfortable and gave him a sense of claustrophobia, mostly because he couldn't see anything, couldn't move, couldn't fight. He tried moving his hands, but merely grasped at the wires and bars holding him with his fingers. There was nothing else. His legs were equally useless.

The Chitauri shifted around and Tony heard something being moved, like medical instruments on a metal tray but he told himself he was imagining it, that he was just trying to match the sound with something he was familiar with.

What he hoped he would never get familiar with was the sensation of something sharp thrusting against the back of his skull. The burn went on and on and Tony screamed through it, regardless of how his jaw didn't cooperate and how much it hurt in his current position, because none of it compared to the sensation of _something_ being pushed into his brain alongside his spine.

When it stopped he thought he had passed out, hoped he had died and prayed it was over.

Instead he felt a sharp twinge at the back of his neck and he knew his skin was being parted, cut open, all the way down to the bone. His screams had turned into sobs and his body shivered from pain and possibly from the trauma to his brain. He had no idea how he was still awake, nor did he want to be for whatever came next.

Something was being moved again, somewhere outside his line of vision and his neck burned all over as something else was pushed in, into a vertebra or beside one, he didn't even know. That was, however, when all the pain stopped, his body rendered numb and his mind followed soon after.

It wasn't the first time Tony hoped he would never wake up but this was the only time he actually meant it.

* * *

Tony woke up only briefly the next time.

He was lying on a table. Well, he rather called it a surface because he had no idea if the Chitauri even understood the concept of a table. His hand and legs were spread out and either bound or he just couldn't feel them. Whatever the truth, the result was the same. His head, which was turned sideways, felt stuffed and drugged. He was thankful for that.

A shape moved across his field of vision; the same Chitauri with its strange skin applications and eye that still didn't fit. Tony saw something like a blade in its hand and wished he would just black out again, to that blissful place where the pain couldn't follow.

His upper neck and skull were on fire. Actually, his brain was on fire, and it wasn't a good feeling. It was terrifying because that sort of feeling meant something was seriously wrong, no matter how limited your knowledge of health and physiology. The fear was animal, a need to protect oneself from further harm, to hide and lick one's wounds.

Tony could neither hide nor tend to his injuries – not when his body felt disconnected – and he still felt the blade cutting into his skin, slicing deep, traveling down his spine, down and down and down from the place it had stopped last time, all the way to his tailbone.

Maybe they were going to skin him alive after all.

The Chitauri moved in front of him, dropping the bloody blade onto another flat surface in line with Tony's eyes. The creature crouched down, meeting Tony's gaze. It was impossible to discern even one emotion in those miss-matched eyes. They weren't human. There was nothing human about the Chitauri, unless perhaps that they had four limbs and a human-like body if you squinted.

A hand reached out for his face, forcing his jaw open – forcing it wide. There was no crunch this time but only a small pop and Tony closed his eyes, wanting to disappear, to be gone, to just fucking die already.

He heard a whir and had to open his eyes. If he didn't know better, the mechanical object in the Chitauri's hand was a drill. When he could no longer see it but felt it touch the back of his throat, it was the first time in his life he passed out from pure shock.

* * *

Waking up was the last thing he wanted to do and if that was the first thought he had when regaining consciousness, Tony knew it was bad.

He felt like Frankenstein's date rape, taken apart and not actually put back together again. He was lying on his back this time, feeling squeezed between two layers; another myriad of bent metal effectively trapping him in a fashion that would have made the creators of _Saw_ weep with envy should they understand the horror of such a simple device.

Tony tried moving his hand and actually managed to wriggle around his right one, slowly inching it up. Poorly healed burns still ached and stung but he didn't care. If he got far enough, high up on his chest, he could finish this. He could unscrew the arc reactor and it would all end.

He had managed to inch his fingers half-way past his ribs when he sensed a presence – more keenly than he had sensed anything before – and a hand landed on his chest, on the arc reactor. "No," a voice said, a slight roughness in it yet filled with certainty. "You will not end your life."

Tony whimpered and wanted to fight, to resist, but his hand fell down, as far as it would go in its current position he had managed to wedge it into between his body and the metal binding him.

The hand moved and he saw the figure it belonged to, robed and wearing some kind of metal muzzle that elaborately covered its face. A face much like the Chitauri, yet different. It was different. The Other was different.

"It works," The Other stated, not to Tony but to someone else. He knew that. Somehow he knew that.

"Yes," a voice with a distinctive hiss in it responded and another figure emerged – the Chitauri who had been playing a poor round of _Operation_ on his body lately. "I am not finished yet," it added and filled Tony with dread, making him whimper again – would have made him piss himself again but he couldn't feel his bladder.

"The Engineer frightens you," The Other said. "His genius should appeal to your own. He saved your life when you could not survive in our atmosphere. He gave you the ability to understand us. Soon… he will evolve you past human limitations so that you can truly exist."

Tony didn't want to evolve past anything he already wasn't but he knew it didn't matter what he wanted. The Other smiled, a horrible expression even in the shadows of its hood and then it drew away, leaving, and it was like something left Tony's mind, leaving him cold and restricted.

"Soon, you will open your mind to us," The Engineer purred, touching his face. It was a gesture Tony hadn't understood before, but he did now; he was a prized experiment. He had survived so far and that made him special. Also, he was a specimen of a race The Engineer knew very little of, and its curiosity made Tony's skin crawl.

Something was lowered from above to rest around his head, like a frame. He briefly spied six slender spikes protruding from its inside and too intimately felt two of them as they touched his ears then pushed into the canal, narrow enough to fit, sharp enough to breach his eardrums once they came into contact.

His throat seized and almost didn't let the scream out, but he did when the spikes pushed further inwards. His body convulsed then eased down as if someone had released a flow of wonderful morphine into his system. His consciousness hung there, lazy and drifting, barely registering the remaining four spikes in front of his face, aligning, two directly at his eyes and two below them.

Tony's mind slipped away before he felt the last four spikes take their positions and push forward.

* * *

He was upright. Seated. Arms behind him, bent backwards and over the backrest, secured in place. His body was on fire, inside and out, covered in sweat yet he was shivering.

Tony remembered wanting to be dead, but the details about _why_ were lost to him. It was like remembering a snippet of something that wasn't necessarily from his life and bringing it to full detail was impossible. Why he had wanted to die wasn't important. He didn't need to remember it.

Yet the thought persisted.

"You don't want to die," a voice told him. A touch slid across his scalp, from the back to front, the sensation strange as if his skin didn't know how to handle it suddenly. "You don't want to die, Tony Stark," the voice went on and the mismatched eyes appeared in front of him, the bulging one fixed on his. "You want to _live_."

_The cave._

_The car battery lying next to him on the cot._

_He has to move carefully to not disconnect the wires going to his chest, yet in the midst of it all – even in the midst of all the pain – he doesn't want to die, even if he perhaps must._

Tony gasped. The memory was firm and the strange mouth of The Engineer pulled into something that wasn't a smile yet Tony's brain knew it was the Chitauri equivalent of one. He knew so many things… and now The Engineer knew them, too.

"You're smart," the mauled face told him. The lips barely moved, not speaking the words, yet Tony understood. His brain understood.

His breathing picked up. Fear sprang forward from its thick infestation in the back of his mind.

A hand grasped his jaw, tight. Inhuman fingers, an alien touch, the eyes searching his, as if that would unlock his mind to the other. Perhaps it did.

"You fight," The Engineer told him. "You survive. You will continue to survive. You will ensure it. You built Iron Man; a shield and a weapon."

"I am Iron Man," Tony said, past the grip on his jaw, determination flaring inside him.

Another non-smile, a tightening of fingers. "We understand each other. We are the same. After I open your mind, all that you are is mine to mold, to uplift. You will be born again. Your life will not be wasted."

_Yinsen is on the ground, bleeding. Dying. He bought them time but his still ran out._

_"Don't waste your life."_

Tony blinked, the shivering getting worse. The fear was still there but his body was disconnected. The fear flooded his system yet his mind stayed still, locked in the grip of The Engineer.

"You can feel it," the Chitauri told him, nodding, approving. "They said a human mind would be fragile, that it would break and vanish. So I took your body first. Once I could control the body, I could keep the mind in place."

_"But you can control it."_

_"Because I learned how."_

Tony wanted to close his eyes but he didn't know how; it didn't work the way it should, lids moving on command. They remained open, wide open, as if they didn't exist. As if it wasn't his body. The touch on his chin was vanishing; he could see the hand but his skin could no longer sense it.

"Yes," The Engineer smiled. "We don't need your body right now." He saw another hand move, a slight touch on the back of his neck, then the sharp sensation of something pushing into his spine, through it. The burn vanished. Everything vanished; he could no longer see. "Show me," The Engineer said.

Tony showed it everything.

* * *

He was still sitting there when he returned to his body – or his body returned to him. It didn't hurt, which was a relief. This time he was cold, but no longer shivering.

Tony blinked slowly. He felt lonely. As in, he felt _alone_, although it hadn't been different a moment ago. Or had it? He thought about it, all of it, all over again. Of his home, his dad, Dummy, school, Pepper and Rhodey, weapons, J.A.R.V.I.S., creation and innovation, Obadiah, Afghanistan, Yinsen, Iron Man, Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers… It was as if he had been over it mere moments ago, like a boring re-watch of a movie he had just seen.

They were his memories, though, so they could hardly be called boring. It was just that… they would have been better viewed with someone else; being shared. But they were his memories, in his head, so that meant no one else could see them.

Right?

He heard them approach and suddenly no longer felt alone. The sensation was instantaneous, inexplicable as if his brain had just learned something it hadn't previously known.

"He lives," a voice spoke – The Other, Tony knew.

"Yes," The Engineer responded. "He calls it 'shock', the mind and body attempting to adjust, to cope and survive. When it wears off, you may begin."

The robed figure appeared before him. Tony looked at it, feeling its presence next to him and in him. In his head. In his mind.

His brain didn't know how to properly handle it and neither did the rest of his body.

The lips curled, an expression closer to a human smile. Tony felt an echo of feelings, their meaning; The Other was pleased. The base of Tony's skull ached, filling him with discomfort.

"He will be ready for you soon," The Engineer stated. Tony's eyes moved over to it, taking in the scars and implants – improvements – the marks of self-experimentation. He didn't know their stories but he knew why they were there now. It was like his arc reactor; a horrible injury had become his next step on the evolutionary ladder. He had raised himself up as he coped and survived.

"Good," The Other remarked and they both left.

Tony was alone again.

So very alone.

* * *

The Other came back later, circling him, closing in.

Tony's mind felt more like his own again, yet he could feel the other pressing in, skirting the edges of his mind, relentless in his advances. He couldn't fight it, not really. He didn't know how. Maybe there was no way. It was like trying to stop a leak with just one finger, the water trickling out just the same.

"The Engineer has looked into your mind," The Other stated. "He finds you intelligent. He finds you… worthy of keeping alive."

Tony followed The Other with his eyes as it passed him again. He was still sitting, still tied, body aching yet he knew not if it was from not moving or whatever had been done to him. Both, probably.

"Your friends…" The Other went on, stopping, waiting.

Tony waited as well.

"They will not come for you," it went on then, circling closer, a brush against Tony's shoulder, leaning in over his other side. A hand on his cheek, strange skin on his, cooler yet alive. "They shut the portal. You saved them all and fulfilled your purpose, your only reason for being. They never wanted you, never trusted you, but they needed the things you could give them. You were never one of them, an Avenger – nor would you have been, afterwards."

Tony felt like shaking his head, denying it, but the heated words vanished as coolness trickled into his mind, as if he were being sunk head-first into cold water. He could see them, all of them, looking at him with distrust and dislike. Some thought they were better than him. Some probably were. And the fact that he hadn't been chosen, but he was the only option they had…

"They left you to die," The Other whispered. "They didn't even try to find you, to save you. None of them cared. No one ever cared."

Tony tried to think of others, of someone who had meant something to him. Someone like Pepper.

The Other was one step ahead of him: "You think she misses you? Such grief you gave her, bringing her down, slowing her progress, constricting and ruining her plans. She was ever walking in your shadow, smothered by you, and she never would have loved you. The life you led wasn't what she wanted, but she had been there for so long she forgot what she truly desired. She would have remembered, eventually, but when you were gone – when she realized what she could become without you – she was truly happy."

He didn't want to admit that it was true. Of course it was true. Pepper had done so much for him, but it was just a job. For so long, Tony had lulled himself into thinking she was happy to do what she did, that she might be happy with him.

"She was relieved to see you go," The Other hissed. "All of them were. Free of your agitating presence." He moved again, circling, dark thoughts filling his head. "She and the rest of them – the world… You tried to save them, to protect them, to give them hope – a hero. They spat at you, wanting your creation as their own, to modify and to change. They wanted the weapon, not the man. They wanted the means, not the ideology. They didn't understand everything you gave up for them, your sacrifices unimportant. They cheered you when it was convenient – then turned their backs when you needed _them_."

The Other turned towards him, walking over, taking his face, turning it up towards the eyes in the shadows of the hood.

Tony felt the mind, not his own, pressing in, deeper and deeper, winding him tight and while it didn't hurt, it was so much worse than anything else. He imagined that's what rape felt like, unwanted and violating, going where none should go without permission or consent. The digits pressed relentlessly at his skin and he wanted to shout, to scream, to die.

"None of them loved you, or cared about you," The Other whispered. "You gave them all you had and it wasn't enough. It would have never been enough. You knew the world was rotten, you saw the problems and tried to fix them, but the world doesn't want to be fixed. It will thrive in its own depravity and consume the ones who try to alter its being. They would have eradicated you, eventually, because you were not what they wanted. Not when you had served your purpose.

"Tell me, Tony," the voice crooned in and out of his head, "did anyone ever want you for who you really are?"

Screaming would have been… easy. It would have been a lie, however, like most of his life had been. A charade to pretend he was happy, that his life had been all he wanted.

Instead he cried.

_to be continued…_


	19. Chapter 18: Genesis -Creating Armageddon

This chapter comes with art by **Imaan** (**insteadofdeath**):

i198 . photobucket . c0m /albums/aa49/Del_Rion/Fan%20fiction%20pics/Avengers%20-%20Iron%20Man%20fan%20fiction/art-c18harnessbyImaaninsteadofde ath . png

* * *

**Chapter 18: Genesis – Creating Armageddon**

* * *

The first time he saw himself, Tony no longer recognized some parts of his body. His hair had been shaved in places so he cut the rest of it short to match the new growth. He shaved his face, too, healing cuts and over-growth messing up the usual design of his facial hair. Both of those things, however, were superficial. It was the last of his vanity showing through, weak but persistent.

What actually made him stand there and stare, naked, was his back.

Thickest at the very base of his skull and reaching down all the way along his spine was something that hadn't been there before. Under his fingers it was hard yet not as cold as metal would be; it was alive, a part of his body; rigged directly into his nervous system. It was dark grayish brown in color, the surface smooth and perfectly attached to skin and bone, not leaving anything exposed.

The first time he saw it, Tony stood, paralyzed, then tried to pull at it, to get it off, then just sank down and cried like a frightened child.

His emotional breakdown didn't last long; The Engineer came in, caressed the strange object and re-directed his mind away from the horror of what had been done to his body.

It didn't end at the harness, as he called it later; the biological device on his back made many things possible, including understanding the Chitauri and enabling a few of them to access his mind. Tony called it a harness because he had no illusions that they couldn't also use it to incapacitate him – and control him to a degree. Whenever he felt like he was losing it, they did exactly that. It felt like a reboot, the slate being cleaned, his inner calm restored.

The Other's visits were frequent in the beginning, whenever he struggled. The poisonous words were deflected at first when Tony stubbornly tried to hang onto his own beliefs, yet soon he realized they were but childish wishes for something that had never existed. Pretense. The others had left him behind, gladly, and the true worth of Tony Stark had never been the man but what the man could do and provide. The world, the people… none of them had actually cared more than briefly, and all of them had turned away eventually.

They had used him and discarded him, although Tony had liked to pretend he was in control of it, that he didn't need them or want them.

He had just buried the truth and lived in his own little version of the world.

The real world was inheritably imperfect and at war with itself. The human race had long ago proved that it sought its own destruction while claiming no such intentions. He had helped that cause, then tried to slow it down, but one could not change their true nature. Everyone was expendable, yet Tony had been the gangrenous limb they cut off first.

"They wronged you," The Other said, "yet expected you to just curl up and die. To make you believe you deserved to be used and then left behind when they could no longer exploit your knowledge. They saw you as a threat; your vision, your ideas. You would have changed the world in a way they never wanted it to be changed – would have taken the world in a direction they never desired. You were the enemy, but as long as they needed you, they pretended to be your friends. To be thankful for your efforts to safeguard them."

All the lies and hidden agendas… Tony was glad he had never trusted anyone, not really. They had all wanted something, a piece of him, and not for the reasons he preferred.

Doubt turned to bitterness.

Bitterness turned to anger.

Anger, as so often with him, turned to resolve.

He had prevailed, and would continue to do so – on his own terms.

* * *

He began by upgrading the harness. It was, essentially, technology. The Engineer's mind was alien yet Tony learned to understand it. He increased his mind's connection to it, finding new uses for it. Just like with the arc reactor, he had to make sure no one could just copy the process – or hurt it – which meant protecting the harness which was directly connected to his spine and brain and thus to the functions of his entire body.

The next step was to learn his surroundings, the materials, and the technology. His ability to understand the Chitauri opened up countless new possibilities to him, yet sometimes going with something familiar was more effective. However, nothing less than perfect would do, so he would take the best of both worlds.

It was early on that he understood where they were headed, and what he was supposed to do. He was aware that he should have been troubled by it, but the thought of going back, to continue being exploited before being cast aside…

Tony had been on his own for so long and just hadn't realized it. The world had been rotting away around him and no one could save it. A quicker way to eradicate everything and start over was by burning it all to the ground. Fire, after all, was nature's own remedy for removing infection and ensuring fertile ground to provide a new generation of life.

* * *

Tony had been making weapons since he was a child. In his father's lab he had watched the maestro at work and when he was on holiday from school, he partook in his father's projects or made his own. It wasn't something you would build for a school's science project but Howard sometimes saw things he liked and adopted Tony's designs.

Howard never thanked him but Tony felt like he had been needed. Story of his life until now. He was determined to change the rules, finally.

With new materials at his disposal, he was free to create something he couldn't have dreamt of before. His sleep was invaded by visions and plans which eventually bred the idea of the perfect predator. Tony was free to create his own rules of anatomy, yet he didn't stray too far away from what felt natural. Perhaps his mind was still restricted, his creativity barred by what his brain had been taught over the years, but that didn't stop him. It never had. He could make it work in any shape or form – but it would be the shape and form _he_ chose.

The first one was beautiful. He also knew it represented too much of himself, of his broken dreams and past designs. It was a good platform to build upon, however. He knew what he wanted, he knew where he was headed, and the others that followed were perfect in every way he could think of. His math had always been right, after all.

The first remained his sounding board, his go-to source for trial and error – and, eventually, became his masterpiece. The others were produced, more or less, by hands that weren't his. They lacked some of the qualities the first one had – qualities that hadn't been needed in the end. That was why, when he told the Chitauri the first one was flawed and unusable, they didn't question him. It wasn't an outright lie and thus undetectable.

Tony wasn't certain why he kept the secret. A failsafe, he told himself. A contingency plan, perhaps. Not that he needed one, and it truly wasn't that, either, but there were reasons. He settled with 'personal'. It was the same reason he never would have given Dummy away either, no matter his flaws or infuriating habits.

Since the size of his project grew exponentially, he was given a large space to work in which swiftly became his own world. He knew it was a space ship, of the same origin as the one he destroyed in what felt like a lifetime ago. He grew familiar with its technology and interface, using it for production of parts and materials he needed. He even reprogrammed it at his leisure to better suit his needs. After all, when it became time to work on the intelligence of his newest creations, he needed all the help he could get and no speed bumps to keep him distracted from his actual goal.

It wasn't the first time, obviously, that he had worked on an artificial intelligence, which made it faster. Also, he hadn't previously been allowed such access to his brain – or access by his brain. The modifications The Engineer had provided Tony put to good use. His memories, his reactions, his knowledge… they all became part of a shared and split consciousness his creations received. The human mind, however, was fickle, so he ensured a cold, calculating side: the lizard brain, which was fitting considering some of the physical aspects of his designs. Well, lizards had existed on Earth for so long one had to admire their capabilities to survive and adapt.

Once they neared completion, The Engineer came to observe the progress. Tony walked with him into a giant, round hall, its edges divided into what he called 'nests'. In each stood one of his creations, glowing eyes vigilant at his approach. Each of their minds briefly caressed Tony's in greeting, to ask him whether the one in his presence was a threat.

Whether they should protect him.

The Engineer looked around. Tony felt the Chitauri's astonishment, its pride. "What do you call them?" it asked.

Tony could see the two of them in his mind's eye, standing in the middle of the open space; through the eyes of his creations. Their vision and presence felt almost like home. "Children," Tony replied easily. It was not pleasure or love that coursed through him; he had yet to teach them the concept, but it was as if they were learning it on their own, skirting the edges of his mind as they strove to increase their knowledge.

The Engineer looked at him for the longest time then nodded. "If they work –"

"They will," Tony shot him a disapproving look.

One of them twitched, slightly larger than the rest. That one he had completed last. It and the first stood side by side, their nests next to each other. A full circle.

The Engineer nodded again and left.

Tony watched the maimed Chitauri go. He knew what the other had been thinking briefly; they needed Tony's mind to control his creations, his perfect weapons of destruction and deliverance. Without him, they would not operate. The Chitauri still had control through the harness but Tony had just ensured he would not be cast aside again.

A small movement caught his eye and a smaller shape emerged from the feet of his latest creation. He smiled. "We will have our chance." A memory of pain crossed his mind; he had not forgotten. His suffering was over but the reminder would forever float within their shared minds, and should he ever forget… his children would promptly remind him.

It wasn't the time, however. Not yet.

Not before Earth burned as it deserved.

* * *

They had stopped, the ships clustered together. Outside the window Tony could see Neptune's immense blue surface. It sucked in the reflection of the arc reactor.

Behind him, The Other approached. He could see the alien's shadow and felt its presence.

"The time of your vengeance grows near," he was told.

Tony's jaw hardened. His resolve…

"You have the means to bring your wretched planet to it knees," The Other went on, stepping to the side, pacing behind him as if a circling shark. "Those who abandoned you will be destroyed. They don't deserve to live in glory while you suffered for them."

"A suffering you inflicted," Tony reminded The Other.

A hand shot out, to the back of his neck. The pain was instantaneous and brought Tony to his knees. His mind stilled, flooded, falling to pieces only to be brought together at the command of another. "We saved you while they left you to die," The Other reminded him, voice smooth and silky. "We cared for you when they did not. Do not forget to whom your allegiance belongs. Who deserve it. Who will reward you for it when they would simply take all you have done and cast you out!"

The hand was removed and Tony took a deep breath. He nodded. "I cannot forget."

"Your children will plunge Earth into a new beginning," The Other said, coming to stand beside Tony's still-kneeling form. "Are they ready?"

"Do as I told you, and they will be," Tony replied then slowly picked himself up. The ship they were in had rotated slightly, now revealing two circular space ships, immense in size, currently locked to each other. The others ships hovered near, preparing to receive one of his children each, to speed up their plan once they approached Earth.

The Other nodded, its pleasure flooding Tony's mind briefly before he was left alone to return to his main ship. He had two now, which was essential should Earth's response take them by surprise. He entered one of them, the Chitauri that were milling around backing away from him. The insides of the ship echoed as mighty footsteps approached and Tony looked up while walking, seeing the immense body of one of his creations pass above him, stepping over him carefully after following the Chitauri to one of the other ships. Their minds grazed each other, a passing affirmation, then all was quiet again.

Well, quieter.

It was never truly silent in Tony's head anymore, and he liked the sense of unity. He finally belonged somewhere, even if he had been forced to create that world himself.

* * *

Seeing Earth again filled him with emotion he could have hardly guarded himself again. It was like coming home. Looking at the planet, spreading out beneath him as the ship slowly circled it in space, in the blindspot of the satellites, Tony looked at its beauty and could not help a tear sliding down his cheek.

"The time has come," The Engineer told him.

Tony was annoyed he had not been allowed to be alone at this moment, but he supposed it was nothing less than what he should have expected.

He nodded, opening a screen next to him. It was time to teach his children all about Earth. The main part of the fleet had finished their approach of the planet and had been noticed, he knew that, but his two ships would remain unseen by human eyes for as long as he chose; he knew the technology they wielded and how to bypass it. What they would see in the coming weeks and months was what Tony gave them. Humanity's dependency on their limited technology would enable him to sweep them aside at the moment of his choosing.

Closing his eyes, he focused. His own mind could not receive all the information he wanted to give his creations, but theirs were not stopped by human frailties. They would upload all the necessary data, and once released… they would know exactly where to strike. Well, Tony had already taught them that, but soon they would be carrying all the necessary data to absorb and deflect any human interference and attacks.

His only concern, truly, was those who didn't depend on weapons to do battle, but he had told his children all he could of the Avengers and they were prepared. If the champions of Earth still stood, enjoying the spoils of victory Tony had given them, they would fall hard.

He would enjoy every moment of it.

* * *

Everything moved in cycles. The first move was his, quick and precise, throwing their enemies off balance and turning the battlefield into a gaping wound.

His mind was with the unit that first encountered the Avengers and he followed the action with dry amusement as it deflected their attacks. His children had learned well, adapting and not needing his help to give his former allies their first taste of defeat.

He continued his systematic crippling of the human race, leaving the door wide open for the Chitauri when they finally attacked. Tony felt tempted to withdraw then but he didn't want to drag this out unnecessarily so his children moved to the cities, driving the people from their homes like frightened ants only to be stepped on.

By then he had secured his two ships; one was well hidden as a necessary back-up while the other one he parked quite visibly just outside his old home in Malibu. Call him home-sick, he just wanted a little taste of it – of whatever was left. He was the one controlling the chaos so ensuring a safe basis of operation in Malibu was ludicrously easy.

Tony also looked at the grand scale, however. He was one step ahead and when the Asgardians finally arrived, led by Thor who was ever so proud and confident, he knew it was time to up the ante. Crippling S.H.I.E.L.D. had been postponed long enough by then; Tony had enjoyed toying with them, tracking their efforts and messages, feeding their growing desperation. They thought they were hidden in the skies, protected by their own network of satellites, but Tony had broken into their files once and this time he had no misgivings about doing so.

The killing blow was precise and J.A.R.V.I.S. performed just as perfectly as before, in complete synch with his newest creations. It was over before they knew what hit them – no doubt mimicking exactly how many of their victims had felt over the years, falling for the causes of the shady organization.

A small trip to New York City was necessary, however, to gather data that had been cut off by the initial attacks. It wasn't a setback or a delay, giving him an actual chance to test the Concordia unit, and, as it happened, gave him a chance to see how far he had actually been able to advance himself when Thor so very conveniently appeared there.

The small unit inside Concordia worked perfectly, just as agile and strong as Tony had meant it to be, taking the brunt of Thor's weapon where his Iron Man suit may have buckled before. He could have dealt the killing blow but bleeding the demigod was enough this time, seeing as they had actually captured someone The Other desired very much: Loki.

Beheading Thor could wait until another time.

Once Tony had delivered Loki to his allies he headed back to Malibu, willing to give himself a little time off the battlefield. Some of the units needed more repairs and he could enjoy the simple pleasures – such as a shower and the feel of human-made clothing on his skin.

For a few days he could actually pretend it was like before, although J.A.R.V.I.S. kept voicing his concerns and units hovered by the house, guarding him. Concordia kept watch directly above the house or by circling around, and Tony's mind was constantly focused on what the other units were doing around the world, extinguishing feeble attacks against them.

Crushing the human resistance was near, he could taste it.

It had the flavor of blood, and he had never liked the taste of it on his tongue quite so much.

_to be continued…_


	20. Chapter 19: Clash

**Chapter 19: Clash**

* * *

**2017  
Malibu, CA**

The earth was trembling, dust, sand and fine pieces of concrete falling on them as they ran back along the narrow passage, all attempts to hide abandoned. Roars rose above them, metal grinding, chorused by explosions. Every now and then someone would falter in the middle of the group, making the people behind them stumble and halt, trying to see what was going on. More often than not, as far as Steve could see, it was Pepper looking up, listening to the obvious sounds of battle overhead. Happy and Rhodey always pulled her forward, though, knowing there was no time to linger.

When the group finally got to the doorway they hurried towards the tree line. Steve glanced up once he had a view of the sky and felt dread assault his stomach; above them the large, dark mecha was moving, tail whipping the air, its feet firmly planted in the earth on either side of the house. The other mecha had moved from the beach and a plane circled overhead, shooting at them.

"That's not one of ours!" Rhodey shouted over the noise. "Maybe Chinese or Japanese."

"Whoever they are, they flew a long way to die," Clint noted, his sharp eyes tracking their movements.

"There were five of them," Lady Sif told them once they reached her and the three other Asgardians. "Four of them have already been destroyed. They tried to attack the floating ship over the water."

Steve nodded, watching the battle. For the time being, it seemed their presence was being ignored. "Rhodes," he called out, "take Pepper, Happy and Jane back to the cars. Natasha, go with them and make sure they'll remain safe."

"No!" Pepper argued at once, stepping forward. "Tony –"

"We'll get him," Steve turned to face her. "We won't leave without him."

"We won't?" Clint asked, doubt in his voice. Steve knew he wouldn't leave them, though, and would do all he could to help, yet this small note of hesitance was his way of stating that the odds weren't good. Steve knew that.

"Did you see a small mecha come out of the building?" Bruce asked Sif and the Warriors Three. "A dark suit, just before the battle started."

"It went into the big one, disappearing inside it," Hogun replied with certainty.

"Any suggestions how we're going to get him out?" Clint questioned.

"The hard way, if we must," Bruce answered and started to tug off his shirt.

Above them the plane made another circle. The large mecha picked up a large stone, big enough to crush a car, weighing it in its mechanical hand and then tossing it into the air. The plane narrowly missed it – but wasn't as lucky when two other stones were thrown at it by the other mecha. With an explosion it fell from the sky and into the water.

"We can't wait much longer," Clint observed the situation, glancing at Natasha. "Take them to the cars. Be ready, we might have to leave quickly."

"I can help," Pepper insisted.

"You can also get killed," Rhodey disagreed, grabbing her arm. "They'll get Tony." His dark eyes met Steve's, willing him to not let his words ring hollow, then he and Happy maneuvered Pepper around and into the trees.

"Come on," Natasha urged Jane who was determined to hug Thor firmly. It was hard to tell whom was more reluctant to let go, her or the God of Thunder.

"We will see each other soon," Thor promised.

"You can do it," Jane said encouragingly.

Thor nodded grimly and watched the women disappear. Once they were gone, he looked at the mecha who seemed to have calmed down. "What is the plan?" he asked Steve.

Letting the air out of his lungs, Steve calculated the chances. "How likely is it that the three mecha we can see right now are the only ones in the area?"

"Highly unlikely," Bruce spoke up first, sounding grim.

"If we can get to Tony somehow, there's no way we can just take him back with us," Clint mused. "I don't think these things are just going to stand idly by while we snatch him."

"Especially if he is the one controlling them," Thor added.

Steve tried to see a path ahead of him, a plan unfolding, but there was nothing. There were too many unanswered questions and if Tony's alliances were, for the time being, with their enemy, how much damage would they have to deal to subdue him? However, he refused to just leave him here, not knowing if they would ever get another chance. Their friend, their fellow Avenger, was out there, still alive, and they owed it to him to bring him home.

It troubled him, though, how certain Tony had sounded when he said he was going to kill them all the next time they saw each other. He had been too calm, too much like himself. What if he really _had_ turned?

Steve searched the large mecha with his eyes, seeing it turn, scanning the area then finally spotting them. So many times in the past this had been the moment to run, to hide, to try and save what they could.

The dark mecha moved one foot, then the other, stepping over the house. It was careful, every movement calculated, and it was glaringly obvious Tony had come here for a reason; he had come home.

Which meant a part of him would know he was fighting for the wrong side and Steve would help him find his way again, to shake him loose from whatever the Chitauri had done to him.

The mecha was only one stride away from them when Steve lifted his shield, pulled down his cowl and knew the others were taking their positions around him. "Avengers," he called out, then glanced briefly at the Asgardians, wondering if they would take insult if included among them. Thor, however, nodded his head and smiled, the Warriors Three brandishing their weapons and Sif shifting her stance. Deciding that the four warriors were with them, Steve turned his eyes to Bruce whose eyes were nailed on the mecha, as if staring it down. "Do you think he'll know –?" Steve started.

"He knows," Bruce nodded slightly. "I can… feel the other guy." His eyes were green when he cast Steve the smallest of looks. "We won't lose Tony today. We'll take him home with us."

'Home' meaning whatever base was left standing – a place with people who loved him and cared about him, and who wanted to help guide Tony back to the light. To welcome him back.

The mecha's forearm moved, a familiar-looking blade sliding forward past the twitching, clawed fingers. It moved into place, locking down, then began to glow blue, energy running across the surface.

"Take it down," Steve called out. "Find Tony. Destroy the others if possible." Well, the last part was a bit unlikely since they hadn't been able to destroy even one mecha up till now, but they were all filled with new resolve and Steve knew how that worked on the battlefield.

They had nothing left to lose – and everything to gain. As if the fate of the Earth hadn't been motivation enough…

Thor let out a battle-cry and took to the air. The other Asgardians rushed forward along with him. Clint fingered his bow then moved to the side; the mecha moved, slashing out with its blade, almost cutting down the attackers, the huge weapon becoming embedded deep into the ground, carving a deep gash into earth and rock to slide it free again. Steve took that moment to dash forward, searching the huge machine for any sign of where Tony might be. They had said he had gone _inside_, and there was a lot of size to the mecha.

The other two mecha had climbed up from the beach and advanced, meeting Thor's furious attack. One of them hadn't quite found its balance yet and when both Mjolnir and the Thunderer smashed against its chest, it toppled over and fell back down, a large spray of water signaling its impact with the ocean. Thor emerged a moment later, attacking the other mecha and the other Asgardians moved to help him.

Steve shifted his attention and rolled to the side as the blade swept down again, narrowly evading it and dodging between the mecha's legs, knowing that no matter its agility, this was the safest place to be. He kept searching for any sign of the small mecha suit, and a possible point of entry to the larger one. There was no door, nor had he expected one.

Lack of a door had never stopped the Avengers from getting in, though; a roar cut through the air, furious and dark, and a moment later the Hulk came running over, jumping high, aiming a punch at the mecha's face. Energy crackled and the Hulk howled, yet at that same moment Clint let loose an arrow and either the backlash of the charge or a reload gave him an opening to actually sink in the exploding arrow and the mecha made a gesture almost like rubbing its eye.

Hulk came pounding back a moment later, more determined than Steve had ever seen him before; even in the midst of all that rage, he was confident the Hulk knew exactly what they were after; that simply smashing the mecha wouldn't get them what they needed. Since the beginning of their brief time together, Tony and Bruce had been friends, and perhaps that was how they were going to win this round: the Hulk recognized the years of regret and sorrow, the misery of losing their teammate, and now that he was right there…

The mecha let out a furious sound, attempting to zap the Hulk again, but the rage monster had managed to punch through, to sink in his fingers and was holding on, tearing deeper, roaring at the pain as the surface current made his skin crackle and blister in places.

"Come on," Steve muttered, waiting for an opening, for when it would matter most.

In the background, the Warriors Three had managed to tie one of the mecha's legs with some kind of cable, keeping it busy every time the machine tried to cut itself loose. They weren't doing much damage but at least they were keeping it still and occupied. However, one mighty tug of the bound leg broke the ground, forcing more of the cable out from where it had been buried. The cablesparked, spluttering angrily as the electric current was cut.

The large mecha halted momentarily, as if noticing this turn of events even with its back turned. The Hulk kept snarling and tearing at its shoulder as the surface current seemed to disappear.

"Do you think we just did something?" Clint shouted, moving to the side to see better.

Steve wasn't certain. The cable led to the house, he was certain of that, seeing as that was the only place he had seen that had electricity in the area. If they had damaged a power-line…

The large mecha above him twitched then, and its chest appeared to unfold slightly, a few feet below the Hulk. Something moved, crawling out – which the green beast didn't notice in his destructive frenzy.

"Tony!" Steve called out, the small suit blending in well with the dark mecha's colors, but it had to be him, reacting to whatever had happened.

The Hulk moved his head and looked down, spotting the small suit just beneath him. A moment passed and for a second Steve feared the Hulk would attack Tony and tear him apart.

He should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

There was a flash and the Hulk was falling to the ground, his grip losing its hold. The mini-mecha jumped up deftly, climbing to the bigger one's shoulder, one of its palms appearing to smoke.

"I think we may have just pissed him off," Clint noted just before the suit – Tony – lifted the smoking hand, aiming at the captured mecha, firing something that looked a lot like a repulsor blast at the caught leg, snapping the cable in half. The Asgardians fell back, seeking cover as the enraged mecha began to freely hunt them.

"Regroup!" Steve called, knowing that if they got separated they didn't stand a chance. "We need –"

A shadow moved above him and landed on his right with a faint _thud_. In the dark he saw faint yellowish lights moving along the mecha suit's surface as Tony stood up, regarding him through the glowing, golden eyes; Steve could feel the weight of his stare even if he couldn't see it.

"Tony," Steve started, lowering his shield. "You don't need to do this."

"You're right," Tony agreed, his voice so distorted it was almost unrecognizable but it was _him_.

Steve felt relief rush through him. Perhaps Tony saw it now, in a moment of clarity. In the background he heard the other mecha move and the unmistakable sounds of battle continue as the Asgardians fought to overcome their opponent. "Call it off," Steve begged.

Something like a laugh reached his ears and something akin to the blade of the mecha slid out of Tony's forearm, gleaming in the moonlight. "It's never been about what I _need,_ Cap," Tony said almost conversationally. "It's about what I want. What I deserve. And what _you_ deserve."

"I don't understand," Steve blinked. He was aware he was letting his guard down, that perhaps he had miscalculated that they would get through to Tony. "You have to believe me, we didn't –"

"You left me to die!" the miniature mecha stepped forward, betraying the emotions of the man within it. "And you would have cast me out either way, letting me burn. I was never an Avenger; Fury just needed me to help you win, to deliver the final blow. Too bad, I survived, and I didn't come here for anything less than what the world deserves: extinction."

The arm with the blade swung forward and Steve felt his arm move to block it while his mind still tried to understand the hatred in Tony's voice. Did he truly believe what he was saying?

"Someone really unscrewed you, man," Clint quipped from the side and the back of Tony's suit seemed to explode. However, the arrow didn't do much damage and Tony turned with a snarl, his posture annoyed. The mecha which had stayed still above them came back to life and began to move towards the archer. Steve saw Clint's eyes flash back and forth, trying to make a decision.

"Hawkeye, go!" Steve ordered. "I'll deal with him."

The mini-mecha turned back around to regard him. Now that he had looked at it for a while, Steve began to notice how it moved much like Tony's Iron Man suit had, only more fluid in its movements. How had none of them seen the similarities? How many times had Bruce actually said out loud how Tony could unlock the secrets of the mecha?

"I told you to leave," Tony reminded him, brandishing the blade, ready to attack. It was harder to read the mechanical body, with no muscles visible, but Steve knew his reflexes would save him. "You didn't need to die here but if that's what you've chosen…" He pounced forward, like a beast, slowing Steve's response a little; it seemed Tony still fought the same but the approach was different, lower and faster. Steve blocked it with his shield and Tony went with it, not using brute impact which would only work against him as Vibranium worked its magic; Tony moved along with his defense, pushing slowly, sliding the blade along the edge of the shield, the contact jarring Steve's arm, sending him backward. He rolled over his shoulder and back to his feet, blocking another slash that would have cut him in two had it met flesh. He was yet again reminded of Thor's injuries, recalling this was the very blade which had caused them.

"Tony, I don't want to hurt you," Steve grunted beneath another blow, pinned beneath the weight of the suit.

"Then roll over and die," came a hissed reply. Above them, a tree sailed through the air before crashing somewhere, glass breaking. The suit's head shifted, looking up, a dissatisfied growl escaping Tony's lips. "Damn it…" he muttered then shoved back, taking a few steps away from Steve. He stood there, looking at the battlefield. The Asgardians were still battling two of the mecha, one of them having crawled back up from the water, while Clint seemed to have been joined by the Hulk to defeat the larger one. Steve followed Tony's gaze, looking at the tree which had embedded itself through one wall of the house. Whether there was something important there, he wasn't sure, but a part of him was beginning to think Tony wanted to salvage this part of his life and every attack that went sideways had the potential to destroy his house.

A wordless form of communication seemed to pass between him and the mecha, for all three of them straightened up and came closer to him. Steve got to his feet, walking backwards, away from the giant robots that didn't need to do more than take a step and squash him. Thor may have survived it but he had no delusions he could do the same.

"This is going to end," Tony declared.

"My friend," Thor called out, landing between Steve and Tony, his hair wild and scratches on his skin. "You needn't fight us!"

"Did you learn nothing during our last encounter?" Tony asked him, stepping forward.

That seemed to spark something in Thor and he strode forward, Mjolnir held tight in his grip. "Where have you taken Loki? Where is my brother?!"

A twisted chuckle met Thor's demands. "Do you feel guilty for bringing him here? For letting him fall into the hands of those whom he betrayed?"

"You took him to the Chitauri, not me!" Thor defended his actions hotly.

"Cap," Clint whispered, appearing from the dark. "I think we need to… re-think our strategy."

Steve frowned and looked at him. "If we get through to Tony," he started.

"He's delaying us," Clint pressed then pointed out, past the house and over the water. The large space ship was moving, its walls shifting as if large doors were being opened. From its huge guts moved shapes, a few of them dropping to the water. "If we don't cut this short, we'll be overwhelmed by mecha," Clint stated. "If that ship is full of them…"

Steve looked on helplessly as Thor continued to argue and threaten Tony into revealing Loki's location. The yellow eyes were not on the God of Thunder, as if tuning him out, but directed at Steve instead, as if waiting for him to make his call.

"Too many robots," the Hulk huffed from somewhere behind Clint.

"Pull back," Steve ordered although it felt like swallowing acid, the knowledge that they might never get a chance like this again to get Tony back. To have the means to defeat their enemy…

"No!" Thor roared and reached for the neck of Tony's suit. "You will tell me where I can find my brother!"

"He can join you in the afterlife," Tony offered and his arm moved.

Thor, in his anger, had moved too close. Even in the dark Steve could see his body jerk and heard the sound of the blade driving itself in, through the armor.

"Just like last time, but I'll finish you off for good tonight," Tony hissed. He began lifting Thor up, pressing the blade deeper, but before anyone could intervene, Mjolnir had already been raised and clanged against the side of his face.

With a sound that was akin to a painful groan, Tony dropped Thor's injured body and clutched his armored head. Steve knew they wouldn't get another chance. The Warriors Three seemed to agree, rushing to Thor's side, helping him to his feet and pushing him off towards the trees. The others followed, Clint rushing ahead of them to guide them through the dark woods. The Hulk's heavy steps trailed behind the group as the mecha began to follow, roars of anger echoing after them.

"We must go back," Thor said, his words slightly slurred.

"So you can impale yourself on his weapon again?" Fandral questioned. "I think not."

"He knows where Loki is," Thor argued.

"He may, or he may not," Volstagg grunted as he struggled to keep their unwilling friend moving.

Trees were snapping in two behind them as the mecha followed.

"We can't outrun them!" Sif called out to Steve. The Hulk grunted an affirmation behind the group.

Steve tried to figure out where they were. He knew that they wouldn't be able to outdrive the mecha either should they find their way back to the cars. All they would achieve was getting them all killed. "Go on ahead; I'll slow them down with the Hulk," he decided.

"As much as I admire your willingness to throw your life away, I have an alternative," Clint called out. "This way!"

Steve decided to trust him and suddenly they found themselves on rocky terrain, leading down a steep slope. He lost sight of Clint soon after, wondering where he had gone. He felt a tug on his arm suddenly and stopped, making the Asgardians run into his back. Clint pulled him to the side and a crack in the rock opened before them. They all pushed through, the Hulk with some difficulty, finding themselves in a cavern between several large boulders. The earth vibrated around them as the mecha approached, hot on their heels, yet it seemed they couldn't find them amongst the rocks.

For long minutes the machines searched then fell back towards the house. Thor grunted in the darkness and when Clint turned on a flashlight, Steve saw that Sif was trying to dress Thor's wound, Fandral pressing firmly against it. It looked like it was very close to the freshly healed injury and Thor appeared pained and unhappy.

"He's trying to take Thor out," Clint mused, voice quiet although they could no longer hear the mecha moving around. "That's smart, seeing as Mjolnir is capable of hurting the mecha. However…"

"He hasn't killed him yet," Steve nodded. "Maybe he knows, deep down… that he's one of us."

Even when it hadn't sounded like it when Tony spoke… So much hatred, running deeper than anything Steve had encountered in his life – and he had faced a lot of anger and resentment in his early days.

"We should move," Clint went on. "Find the others and head back. We got what we came for."

_Not everything_, Steve thought but didn't say it out loud. He met the Hulk's eyes in the semi-darkness and it felt almost like the beast agreed with his unspoken words, looking most disgruntled and almost… sad.

_to be continued…_


	21. Chapter 20: No Man Left Behind

**Chapter 20: No Man Left Behind**

* * *

The journey back to the East Coast seemed even longer than the drive to Malibu had been, even when they contacted Fury after putting safe distance between themselves and the mecha to get S.H.I.E.L.D. to pick them up and fly them home.

While waiting to be airlifted from a remote and long-abandoned air strip, everyone was quiet and lost in their thoughts. Pepper cried most nights, in Happy's arms; the look she had given Steve when they returned wasn't filled with anger but rather, sorrow. Perhaps she had known it would end that way.

Rhodey was quietly brooding, sitting there with an arc reactor shining in his hands. Steve was thankful they hadn't risked bringing the War Machine armor with them because he knew the other man might have put it on and headed back to Malibu, never to be seen again. Or perhaps he would have gotten through to Tony… This way, they would never know, and that knowledge hung heavy on James Rhodes' shoulders, clearly.

Bruce was much the same way; his eyes would stare at the blue shine of the arc reactor, a distant expression on his face, yet he didn't fail to meet Steve's eyes at length every time he looked at the scientist, a mutual thought passing between them: they should have done more.

"We weren't going to fight an army of mecha when we've had enough trouble handling one," Clint told him as they stood outside, waiting for sign of the plane that was supposed to come and get them. His reassurance rang hollow, probably even in the archer's own ears, but Steve knew it to be true. They would have all died there, all of them lacking the will to actually hurt Tony. Trying to talk him out of it…

Steve checked on Thor regularly. His wound bled but the other Asgardians were convinced he would make it. "He's stubborn," Volstagg mused, stroking his beard. "He's hell-bent on finding Loki – and rescuing your friend who has almost killed him twice now."

Hopefully the axe-bearing warrior was right; Steve dreaded Thor forgetting their brief alliance with Tony and turning against him, taking his friends with him. The Asgardians had no true friendship with any of them and where Thor went, they would follow.

Thor was noble, however, and he and Tony had put most of their indifferences aside to fight the Chitauri. Just like the rest of them… Steve was adamant in his belief that it was enough and they would all stand united behind the decision that they wouldn't leave their fellow Avenger at the mercy of their enemies.

When the plane finally arrived, they drove the cars inside it and took off mere minutes later. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents didn't ask them for progress reports, perhaps not even knowing why they had been out here; they were following orders and all they needed to do now was to get them safely back to base.

As they flew, Steve tried to rest. The cargo plane was big, clunky and uncomfortable, making him wonder if they would even make it, but he knew it was simply some old fears gripping his gut. He had flown enough after crashing into the ice; he could handle this.

"Captain?"

Steve opened his eyes to find Happy before him. He blinked the cobwebs from his eyes and straightened up. "Is something wrong?"

The man gave him a gruesome smile. "The world's ending, so I guess you could say that."

Steve allowed a humorless chuckle to escape.

Happy sat down a safe distance from him. They had been through much together and Steve liked to think there was a friendship forming between them, yet he knew there were old issues there as well, mainly because Tony had died under his command. That Tony was alive didn't change that in a heartbeat.

"How's Ms. Potts doing?" Steve asked when Happy seemed lost in thought.

"She's… been better," Happy admitted. "I think it was almost better when we thought Tony was gone. You wouldn't think coping with that would be easier than knowing he's alive out there, but…"

"We'll get him back," Steve promised.

Happy looked at him, eyes dead-serious. "Don't make promises you can't keep. I heard him out there – saw him. I've known him longer than you have. I saw him after he came back from Afghanistan, saw a changed man who put on the armor. What we saw in Malibu…" He fell silent for a long moment, looking at the floor between them. "I think maybe he did die out there, you know? That wasn't Tony. Not really. It's like someone broke him, finally, and then crammed the pieces back together to make it look like he was still the same man."

"You're giving up on him?" They both looked up at Bruce's voice, the scientist standing before them, leaning on a crate firmly tied in place as the plane shuddered slightly in turbulence.

Happy's face hardened. "I don't want to. Doesn't mean I won't have to. We don't even know what was done to him, if he…"

"He couldn't have changed so much on his own," Bruce argued.

"You never saw the darkness in him," Happy replied. "How much time did you spend with him?" He looked at Bruce and Steve both, challenging them. "_Hours._ You don't learn to know a man in mere hours, no matter what you go through together. From what I've heard, you spent most of that time fighting." He fell silent, a stubborn expression on his face. "I had his back for years, seeing the highs and the lows. I knew things about him Pepper never wanted to hear. If you really… left him to die out there, who's to say he doesn't want a little payback?"

"Then he would have struck us, not the entire world," Steve said. "He put his life on the line for this world; he wouldn't try to destroy it, no matter what. He took that missile and he did what none of us could. He _knew_ what he was going to do." Steve remembered that one last exchange, of telling Tony that it was a one-way trip. Had he known how it would end, he would have said something different. He would have thanked him.

"That wasn't him in Malibu," Bruce agreed. "We owe it to him to save him – or give him the proper death he deserves."

Steve looked at him briefly in horror but knew it to be true; if they couldn't save Tony, they should at least try and end the horrors he had faced in the hands of their enemy.

"I hope you're right," Happy sighed and bowed his head, clasping his hands. He looked so sad and tired, a man ready to let go – only he couldn't; others depended on him and he had to keep fighting, to keep going.

In that respect, he was no different from the Avengers.

* * *

It was late when they finally got to the last Helicarrier. Most of them hadn't been able to sleep more than a few hours on the way back but they knew debriefing was unavoidable and none of them would actually get any rest before they knew what was going to happen next.

The Helicarrier currently sat in the water like the day they had first been flown out there, well hidden but not invisible. Patrols constantly moved around it, on their toes, aware that even one slip would compromise their position.

Fury and Agent Hill were waiting for them as the group gathered in a meeting room, along with Darcy and Benjamin Pollack. Darcy rushed over to hug Jane and then Thor, who had been tended to by the S.H.I.E.L.D. medics on the plane; any further examination would have to wait until their debriefing was over.

Fury and the others listened in silence as they told their tale. Steve did most of the talking with only limited input from the others. Afterwards, while a stretched-out hush encompassed the room, Fury closed his eye and rested his face in his hands.

A worried look passed over Hill's face. "Sir?" she prodded carefully.

Fury straightened after a moment, looking at the recent arrivals as if to read their reactions to the newfound knowledge. His gaze eventually landed on Rhodey. "You got the arc reactors?"

"Yes, sir," the pilot nodded.

"I hope you're not thinking of flying back to Malibu once the War Machine armor is operational," the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. added.

Rhodey's face froze yet his eyes burned hot, betraying his reaction. "I don't see how I can stay here while Tony's out there –"

"You won't be of any use to us if you get yourself blown out of the sky and trampled by the mecha," Fury told him flatly.

"We won't abandon him," Steve joined Rhodey, standing up.

"He might be the key to this whole thing," Natasha agreed by taking a different route. "If he indeed controls the mecha, extracting him is our top priority. We've never had such a chance to slow the enemy down, or completely cripple their assault."

"It's not Director Fury's decision," Agent Hill spoke up. "The other world leaders and commanders –"

"They'll agree," Fury interrupted her. "They have to." He looked at the Avengers and their allies once again. "In the meanwhile, I have to be able to trust that you won't go to meet him on your own. You didn't manage to contain him the first time, so this needs to be a concentrated effort. If he's been here the entire time, I don't think Mr. Stark will be going anywhere. To be honest, I think we'll be able to make him come to us."

Fury waited for their response and Rhodey was the one who finally nodded his agreement. That seemed to be enough for Fury and he got up and left the room, silence engulfing the space once more as all of them fell into their own thoughts.

_to be continued…_


	22. Chapter 21: Capture

**Chapter 21: Capture**

* * *

Whether Fury actually managed to sell the idea of rescuing Tony, or even told the remaining leaders of the world of their discovery, Clint didn't know. The chances were good that if the others knew and Tony was captured, he would be experimented on, tortured for information or even put to death on the spot. That would create strife between the remaining heroes and the rest of the world, plunging them to certain destruction.

That was why Clint eventually decided Fury hadn't breathed a word of Tony's miraculous return and some other motivation was at work when the remaining military forces began to gather outside Los Angeles. The preparations were made carefully yet swiftly, in hopes that their enemy would not notice their approach too early.

It looked like a last-ditch attack; there wasn't much of anything left, whether it was ammo, men or spirit. They had tanks, planes and other vehicles but most of them had seen their best days before the war began.

Clint sat on top of a shipping container, adjusting his arrows. He had scraped together what he could, just like everyone else, and while it wasn't going to be pretty it would work. It seemed like a lifetime ago when he could just walk to S.H.I.E.L.D. armory and ask for anything, expecting it to be handed to him within the next minute.

Natasha climbed up to join him, fiddling with her gauntlets. "How long do you think we're going to last?" she mused.

"Depends," Clint replied.

"On what?"

"How many mecha we'll have against us." Clint turned the current arrow over in his hands, looking along its length. It was crooked but not too much. He would just have to remember that when he fired this one. It made him want to sigh but instead he just grabbed another and started checking it.

Natasha was quiet, not unlike her, yet Clint could sense her unease and looked away from his work, finding her gazing at the western horizon. She had been fairly silent after they discovered Tony was alive and on a mission to kill them all. Only, if Tony really wanted them dead, he probably would have come for them already. A lot of people were counting on that, Clint knew, and he hoped they were right.

He wouldn't mind a little help…

An alarm began to sound suddenly, blasting over the area. There was no way anyone within a ten mile radius wouldn't hear it – which meant they were under attack. Natasha was on her feet at once, jumping down to the ground, seeking the others. Clint remained where he was, buckling his quiver in place, testing his bow again then looked up, searching the skyline. There was nothing he could see, but soon the ground began to tremble, just slightly, vibrations traveling up the metal to his feet.

Men were moving to into position all over the compound, which they had set up in a small, abandoned city and its vicinity. Voices echoing off the building walls snapped at each other, shouting commands at grim-faced soldiers. Most of them look empty-eyed, the long war and innumerable casualties having taken their toll. For months it had looked like they were losing, simply struggling to keep whoever was left alive. So many of those people had already given up hope, although many eyes looked up as Captain America strode to the head of the lines, shield glimmering in the rays of the sun, uniform fresh from the armory – one of the last ones, Clint guessed. Cap looked good today, awe-inspiring and strong, reminding them that there were still heroes left.

Clint allowed himself to smile and looked ahead again.

He saw five figures moving towards them, unhurried and languid, their heavy footfalls like a continuous, steady earthquake that got closer and closer. All of these men had seen a mecha by now – and survived. Many of their fellow soldiers hadn't been so lucky. Clint knew he'd had a nightmare or two already of the destruction the machines had wrought.

On the far side of the compound, he could see Lady Sif and the Warriors Three adjusting their armor. Thor was still recuperating further back but he would join them in their hour of need. For now, though, Steve had put his foot down and told the God of Thunder he wouldn't be helping anyone by bleeding all over himself. Thor had looked chastised and Jane's pleading looks had made him decide that he would make sure the ones who didn't participate in battle would be safe.

Even further off, Bruce was walking across an empty stretch of land which used to be a sports field. He hadn't let the Hulk out yet but it was only a matter of time. For now he looked small and tired, waiting for the oncoming onslaught.

The tanks moved into position and began firing once the enemy was within range. They appeared slow and clumsy against the mecha, however, which could apparently calculate the trajectory of a weapon fairly well and dodged without appearing to do so. Rockets and other types of ammunition were launched, filling the air with smoke and explosions yet few of them hit the targets and Clint shook his head; they should have waited until the mecha were too close to dodge effectively.

Ground troops began to move, spreading out and finding good vantage points. Clint followed their lead, seeking high ground in a place where he would go unnoticed. Buildings were risky, easily destroyed, but he could either choose that or be trampled to death on the ground while not seeing his surroundings. He wagered it wouldn't take long before he would get an opening to strike, but until then it was all a matter of staying out of the way and having a clear shot at the target.

The mecha never shied away from a confrontation and this time was no different; they came rushing in, ground shaking, guns going off, and soon enough there was a tank sailing through the air, crashing into a nearby house, taking it down. Debris filled the air, screams and shouts buried under the noise and Clint grimaced as smoke filled his vision from an explosion nearby. He held his breath as sand peppered his skin and sought refuge in a house, rushing through it and into the backyard, trying to seek out a vantage point in the ever-changing landscape; the Hulk had just emerged and tangled with the first of the mecha, thrashing around, creating the kind of havoc that no one would want to be within range of. Most of the tanks had disappeared and Clint could only imagine where they would be found in the aftermath; he'd never quite forgotten the sight of a 70-ton vehicle embedded in the side of a high-rise, somewhere around the thirtieth floor, after one of their first city battles.

He took a risk and climbed up the fire escape to the roof of a five-story building, knowing his vision would be blocked from a few sides but it was better than nothing. A car went flying a few streets down, followed by another; the Asgardians were clearly getting on the nerves of another mecha, making it toss anything large and heavy at the elusive fighters, which included vehicles, parts of buildings and slices of street – asphalt, pavement and all.

Clint resumed searching the area with his eyes then froze. He put his hand to his ear, activating the comm signal to the other Avengers. "I can see the big mecha, entering the city soon." It was easily recognized, even before their earlier meeting in Malibu; it was bigger and darker, oozing with power, scanning the area. Clint fingered his bow but knew he had to wait; Tony might be in there or he might not be. Either way, they had a battle to win – after which they could deal with their teammate's mental issues.

A group of soldiers ran past the building Clint was perched on top of and he guessed the fight wasn't going their way; they didn't seem to be just regrouping but running for their lives. Soon enough he understood why: one of the mecha came crashing through the next block and all Clint could do was jump and try to hit the next house as a giant mechanical foot crushed the ceiling he had just been standing on. He managed to hang onto the edge of the roof and pull himself up while the mecha moved past him, hunting the soldiers, and Clint knew that even if he fired all of his arrows he wouldn't make a difference in helping them.

He had to wait for an opening and shoot where it counted. It wasn't that different from his usual approach in battle but it hurt more right know, the knowledge roiling in his gut that so many of the people out there would never get to go home – or whatever was left of home.

The air stirred and Clint looked up, just in time to see Chitauri ships break through the clouds, slowly sinking lower and lower. The mecha didn't stop, didn't even slow down.

A flash of red rushed across the sky and blasted the largest mecha in the face: War Machine. That meant the fighters weren't far behind. Maybe that was why the soldiers had been retreating. Clint tested his communicator, finding static on most stations. That explained why no one was telling him anything. "Piece of crap," he muttered and tugged it out of his ear then straightened and tried to find a better spot.

War Machine was circling the dark mecha, cautiously engaging after the last incident. They may have walked out of Malibu with several arc reactors but without Tony, there was only so much other engineers could do for the suit if it got much more damaged.

The mecha whirled, trying to catch the armor as it flew past, missing only by a few feet. Rhodes was cutting it close, but then, nothing less would do now that they knew who the mastermind was behind these things. Clint started making his way towards the scene, knowing that might be the most important place to be.

While he did that, keeping an eye on the situation, he saw the chest of the large mecha shift and the smaller suit crawled out like a hatchling. This hatchling, however, could shoot back at War Machine and promptly did so. Two beams of repulsor rays met in mid-air, creating an expanding ball of light. It sparked between them, feeding them both, then suddenly blew up. Had Clint been closer, he might have been thrown back by the wall of energy that sent everything flying in their vicinity – the two suited men included.

Clint hurried forward, seeing the large mecha move towards War Machine who lay on the ground. It seemed his suit was still functioning but the way he was shifting meant Rhodes was either injured or disoriented. Knowing he could provide a distraction, Clint pulled out an arrow and fired at the mecha, drawing its attention.

The machine took a step, growling almost, appearing to hesitate between targets. Before it could choose, however, its head whipped around, body following, a furious snarl escaping its mouthless face. Clint followed its gaze and saw that Hogun and Volstagg had arrived at the scene, and it appeared Volstagg's axe was embedded in the small mecha suit Tony had been wearing earlier.

Much as that moment should had filled him with a sense of victory, Clint also felt dread; if Tony died, it wouldn't be the end any of them had wanted. If he lived, his retribution might be more than they could take.

For the time being it seemed Tony was alive and kicking, the suit moving to seize the axe and rip it free, bits of metal flying in the air, accompanied by what seemed like drops of blood. Next the suit hurled itself at the large Asgardian who seemed quite taken with the display of strength. The mini-mecha lifted Volstagg up and threw him at Hogun, making them both crash hard to the ground.

The suit stepped around, facing Rhodey and the big mecha. Clint knew he didn't imagine a slight imbalance in the movements; the suit was injured, and so was the man inside.

Clint looked around. He knew that Cap was somewhere out there, hopefully with a plan. They needed to make a decision soon, before War Machine became a pancake under the mecha's foot and Tony bled to death in the middle of the carnage.

New sounds of battle erupted around him before Clint could locate anyone from his team. Small aircrafts flashed past him, firing at everything around them; the Chitauri had finally joined the battle. Cursing, Clint jumped down from the roof, grasping at a window ledge, a pipe, some wiring and another ledge, lowering himself to the ground. He needed to find the others, to regroup and decide what they would do –

As he turned another corner, a half dozen Chitauri had just landed there. Their eyes spotted him and Clint drew an arrow, knowing he couldn't turn and run. He shot three of them before the rest were on him and he dodged and fought, bringing two of them down and then tangled with the last one. He needed to kill this one, to move on and _keep_ moving until they could fight back.

"Hawkeye!"

He thrust an already fired arrow in the Chitauri's eye-socket and turned swiftly, bow raised. Along his arm he could see a small army of Chitauri standing there, pointing their many weapons at Captain America who looked ready to collapse to the ground. His uniform was torn and bloody, cowl ripped away.

Clint lowered his bow which was promptly taken from him. His arms were bound tightly, no room for escape. As the Chitauri moved them forward he looked at Steve who was breathing heavily. "Tell me this is part of the plan," Clint spoke in a low tone.

The blue eyes met his, serious and tired. "I'm working on it."

They were marched off to a clearing. Well, it had probably been a small park in the crossroad of streets but with the desolation around them, it had vastly grown in size. Clint noticed Volstagg and Hogun, already bound and on their knees and he and Steve were made to join the line. It didn't take long before Natasha was dragged over, bloodied and still fighting, yet she calmed down at seeing the rest of them.

"Welcome to the party," Clint joked lamely.

"Your bouncers suck," Natasha shot back and looked worriedly at Steve's slumped shoulders. "I saw you back there, Cap. You did all you could."

It was a familiar speech, which meant a lot of people had died all around Steve and he had been the one left standing. From the looks of it, he had been pretty close to joining the fallen this time around.

A clang and a curse made them look up; War Machine was being dragged to the clearing by five Chitauri. It appeared his suit wasn't working and once he was dumped in front of the rest of them, it appeared something heavy had fallen on top of him – like the foot of a mecha – and something had pierced the arc reactor in his chest, slashing a deep cut from shoulder to hip.

Chitauri were gathering all around them. The sounds of battle grew distant, dying away. Fandral and Lady Sif were brought to them a while later, yet Clint noted the Hulk was nowhere to be seen. Good. At least they still had that ace in the hole, besides Thor.

"They seem to be rather selective about their captives," Fandral noted darkly. "The Midgardian fighters we were with were executed on the spot."

"Not many managed to escape," Sif agreed. "They were withdrawing but the mecha are giving them chase…"

On the far edge of the clearing, the large dark mecha was regarding them. Clint stared back at it although he knew it wouldn't make a difference.

"Is War Machine well?" Sif asked then.

"The suit's jammed," Rhodes' voice carried mutedly from within.

"Stay quiet; they might think you're dead and leave you," Natasha instructed.

"Don't count me out just yet," the man in the suit argued.

"I'm not," Natasha shot back. "Playing dead means the others can collect you later."

"And what will they collect?" a voice interrupted their banter. The mini-mecha suit walked over, stopping beside War Machine's body. "Scrap metal?" The voice was distorted but because they knew its origin, it was easier to recognize.

"Fuck you, Tony," Rhodes tried to move, shifting around a little.

"Shut up, Rhodey," Tony snapped, one arm moving to his injured side. There was wetness there, no doubt blood. "This is on your head, _partner_."

"I'll make it up to you when you stop _fucking around_ –"

Rhodes was cut off when Tony stomped a foot against his head. The helmet took the impact, no doubt about that, but it was a point well made.

"We can help you," Steve started. "It's not too late."

"We're past that point, Cap," Tony retorted. "It's been 'too late' for a long time. I –" He stopped mid-sentence, shifting his head, standing very still. It reminded Clint of the mecha, of the stillness they could adopt when not destroying things.

An alien aircraft flew over them slowly and landed at the edge of the clearing. It looked like a transport ship, its wide bay doors opening and letting out another group of Chitauri. However, two of them looked significantly different; one appeared slightly mauled and put back together the wrong way, while the other wore a robe and walked towards them with the likeness of the Sith in the _Star Wars_ movies.

Tony let out a soft sound and stepped back from War Machine. The hooded figure came over first, regarding them all. It wore some kind of strange cage in front of its face, leaving most of its alien features hidden. The other one went to Tony, making a series of strange sounds, and slowly the suit unfolded and Tony slid out of it, an unhappy expression on his face.

"The mightiest defenders of Earth," the robed Chitauri finally spoke, in plain English. "Too long you have waylaid our plans, feeding your feeble resistance with false hope of victory."

None of them commented. Honestly, Tony would have been the one to say something, unable to keep quiet; Clint knew that for certain from the short time he had known the man. Instead the captured Avengers kept their eyes on their injured teammate, waiting for his reaction.

The robed Chitauri turned, following their gaze. "Ah," he mused. "You have discovered the deliverer of your doom."

"He's not going to deliver anything if he bleeds to death," Steve finally spoke up.

"I'm fine," Tony snapped, so very much like himself, yet Clint wondered if he really thought he was fooling anyone. Sure, he was still standing but it was clear Volstagg's axe had cut deep.

Before anyone could reply to that, another Chitauri aircraft arrived and one of the aliens jumped down, crouching in front of the robed figure and explaining something in a rapid voice. The hidden face whirled to look at Tony again. "They have sent planes to destroy us." Tony's face didn't even twitch, as if he already knew that. "The people of Earth are ready to kill their own defenders in hopes of gaining a victory. This is the world you once served; this is the world you gave your life to." The hooded Chitauri stepped closer to Tony, as if to better make his point. Clint was beginning to see how someone – this Chitauri, perhaps – had managed to mess with Tony's head in order to have him turn on everything he used to believe in. "Defeat their final attack and we are one step closer to the annihilation of Earth."

It sounded almost like an order.

Tony looked at the alien face then nodded half-heartedly. He appeared conflicted, of perhaps it was simply pain from his injury he could no longer mask. Clint could almost smell the blood, or perhaps it was one of his fellow Avengers bleeding next to him. Hell, it could be one of his own – numerous yet minor – injuries, which he had stopped counting a while ago.

The hooded Chitauri appeared pleased, turning back towards the captives. "You will witness the destruction of your world and then join it in the dark abyss of death."

"We are not done fighting yet!" Fandral vowed. "Your downfall is near."

Tony glanced at them and then turned, reaching towards the dark suit which had closed back down to its original shape. Before he could touch it, though, the mauled Chitauri reached for him, pulling him back. Clint saw Tony's body tense in response when an alien hand touched his wounded side, coming away bloody.

An order seemed to be given, four other Chitauri stepping forward and seizing Tony. "No," Tony protested, "it's fine. I can fight." He struggled visibly but was forced down to the ground on his back, the Chitauri holding him down as he attempted to struggle. Beside them the small suit seemed to twitch, coming to life on its own, as did the large mecha at the edge of the clearing.

"You will not resist this," the hooded Chitauri ordered in a dark voice.

The mauled Chitauri stepped closer swiftly, making a sound then pulled something from what looked like a belt around its waist. The device, whatever it was, lit up almost like a torch without an actual flame. Its free hand grasped Tony's clothes and pulled them aside, exposing bloodied skin – then pushed the glowing device to the flesh.

Tony howled with pain, thrashing and kicking, trying to twist away. The smell of burnt skin drifted over to Clint, making him want to gag or at least turn away. He kept looking, though, watching as the small mecha move closer, the blade sliding out in a clear display of threat. The Chitauri with the device noticed this and reached its free hand to Tony's face, grasping his jaw, leaning closer.

A wordless exchange appeared to pass between them and Tony fell silent, his body still jerking. The mecha, both of them, went still once more, and the mauled alien went back to work. Once the wound was burned shut, the bleeding stopped, the Chitauri put away the device and motioned for the others to release the man. Tony remained on the ground, limp save for the occasional twitches, his eyes wide and filled with tears.

"Good," the robed one stated, clearly pleased.

Tony's head lolled towards it, then for a moment his brown eyes met those of the Avengers, gazing at them. Clint stared back intently, unsure whether what he saw was real or what he wanted to see; rebellion, pain, and recognition.

"Finish them," the robed Chitauri commented and Tony slowly pushed himself to his feet. He carefully tugged down the shirt, clearly avoiding the damaged area, every movement pained. His eyes appeared dark even with the tears still hanging onto them, filled with resentment; for a moment it seemed he was tempted to destroy every last Chitauri in the vicinity, starting with the mauled and robed ones.

The distant sound of planes reached their ears and Tony stepped back, spreading his arms. The small suit came to life, moving forward as it opened and then engulfed Tony's body completely, moving around once it was done and jumping up, deftly caught by the large mecha which stepped over them to move away from the clearing – towards the oncoming attack.

The robed Chitauri made a motion with its hand and turned towards the ship it had come from. The remaining Chitauri ushered their captives up, making them kneel again once inside, chaining them to the wall as if being tied up wasn't enough.

"You saw it, right?" Clint whispered once the robed Chitauri had disappeared.

Natasha nodded, glancing at Steve.

Their leader brooded silently for a moment then appeared to come to a decision: "They're controlling him. Somewhere in there… he's still fighting. He knows what he's doing is wrong, and we're going to use that to bring him back."

Clint wondered how they were going to do that. He doubted it would be as easy as his conversion after Loki had put him under his control.

It seemed to take forever before the door opened again and Tony walked inside, this time without the suit. The aircraft started vibrating a moment later and took off from the ground, probably taking them up to a space ship.

The mauled Chitauri appeared again, speaking in those alien sounds. Tony's expression became more guarded by the second and when four other Chitauri approached – possibly the same four from before – he took a step back. The Chitauri dragged something in through another door; it looked like some kind of tank, filled with yellowish, thick liquid that barely sloshed around as it was moved. At the bottom of the tank lay dark shapes, like some kind of machinery with formidable looking appendices.

Once again the mauled Chitauri appeared to speak, motioning towards the tank – which clearly Tony wanted nothing to do with. He circled to the side, his stance changing, yet the four Chitauri were moving closer again. They grabbed at Tony who valiantly tried to slip away.

"Don't," he said, voice breaking slightly. Something appeared to shimmer before his eyes, like a screen coming to life out of nowhere. "I don't want to –"

The mauled Chitauri stepped in front of his struggling form, slid one hand to the back of his head and there was a faint crunching sound. Tony's body went still, his eyes open but unblinking, as if frozen. His expression went unnaturally slack. The mauled one let out a series of almost soft sounds and the four let go, stepping backwards. With its hand still at the back of Tony's head, the Chitauri led him towards the tank, then finally moved back its hand. It looked like something slid out of Tony's neck – or where his neck should have been but was covered by some strange ridge that continued down and disappeared under his shirt.

Tony moved mechanically, tugging off his shirt and then his pants, standing there naked and looking like he wasn't aware of it at all. Scars marked his skin and from the base of his skull to his tailbone ran that same strange ridge Clint had spied earlier, covering his spine perfectly and looking like it had been seamlessly fixed into his skin.

At the Chitauri's gesture, Tony turned and walked to the tank, stopping before it. His nostrils flared and eyes blinked, as if he was coming back from the zombie-mode he had been put into. The mauled Chitauri didn't miss a beat, shuffling up next to him and seizing him by the jaw this time – much like out in the clearing where he had burned the wound shut. With that hold keeping Tony in place, the Chitauri reached into the tank and retrieved what looked like a tube with a thick needle at the other end. Without any warning he jammed that needle into Tony's neck, through the brown-gray ridge.

Tony's body sagged as if he had gone unconscious that very second; no one could fake that, the body going limp and losing all control of its muscles. The Chitauri, with disturbing gentleness, carefully placed Tony into the tank, submerging his body in the yellowish substance before sealing a lid over the whole thing. With one long look at the captives, the Chitauri left, taking the other four with it, leaving them all in stunned silence.

_to be continued…_


	23. Chapter 22: Trickster

**Chapter 22: Trickster**

* * *

Something was brewing, Loki could sense it. The ship had been moving recently and he could smell the tinge of nervousness in the air, brief yet potent. He hadn't spent enough time with the Chitauri to read them perfectly but the way the one guarding him kept shifting around suggested unease.

Loki wondered if Midgardians had finally won a battle, or whether Thor was getting close; his step-brother would look for him tirelessly, he knew that, but Loki had recently given in to the idea that Thor wouldn't be able to find him. Perhaps his friends were even holding him back, to make Thor focus on the war instead of one lost family member…

Yes, Thor's precious Avengers would have happily thrown him straight into the arms of the Chitauri the moment they arrived on Earth, but Loki had made himself useful and they had had to swallow their childish bitterness.

He entertained, in small doses, the possibility that he would be saved regardless of facts and certainties; that Thor would find him, on purpose or by accident, and release him before the Chitauri finished the work they had started.

Loki shifted slightly and that small movement tugged at every wound and bruise on his body. They hadn't killed him yet but torture came in many shapes and forms. His death would take time, and Loki was certain he would wish it to be over long before it actually was. That didn't mean he would give into them, nor would he break for a long time to come, but he didn't regard his capture with fondness.

He bared his teeth in a slight hiss as his abdomen continued to burn from the earlier movement.

Those Midgardian fools hadn't seen it, none of them. They had looked at their enemies, at the mecha, and kept tossing theories back and forth. Yet when the one in the small suit lifted him up by his throat, Loki had understood all too well.

Irony…

He hadn't seen Stark since he had been taken to his prison cell, nor during the long hours of agony his hosts put him through, but he knew the man was there. Not necessarily on the ship but alive, on Earth, wreaking the havoc that could have been Loki's. He had a feeling there would be no one left for anyone to rule once the man was done.

Whatever madness drove him…

Loki moved his head as the guard shifted again, looking down the hall, adjusting the weapon in its hands. Truly, they should have paid more attention to him, their prisoner: even in his weakened state Loki was happy to grasp at a chance for freedom, and when the guard kept looking away, Loki focused on a piece of metal on the floor. He had spotted it earlier but it was too far away for him to reach. Nothing but garbage, really, but as his mind grasped it the sharp piece shifted, slowly turning ninety degrees.

His jaw set and brow furrowed, Loki lifted one hand, slowly, carefully, the piece of metal following, drifting into the air. A bit higher…

The Chitauri turned, looking at him, noticing the movement of his hand. It stepped closer, as if demanding for him to stop or explain himself, but Loki had come so close… He sent the metal splinter flying, embedding it deep in the Chitauri's eye-socket. It fell heavily to the floor after taking two stuttering steps, the crash echoing off the walls but attracting no attention.

Loki waited a moment longer then forced himself upwards, sweat covering his skin at the effort. With the guard taken care of, he still needed to break out of his prison cell. He was just considering trying to move the body with the last of his magic, to use the Chitauri's weapon to break the lock, when a shadow moved against the far wall. He froze, alarmed, considering it was lucky he had gotten this far. He had killed several guards during his first days of imprisonment, trying to trick them setting him loose, but they had quite effectively drained the fight out of him afterwards.

The shape moved, almost soundlessly which seemed impossible for a machine. Loki moved away from the door of his prison, backing up to the far wall as the dark miniature mecha advanced, stopping in front of the door, regarding him through the barred door with its glowing eyes. It didn't seem to have noticed the dead guard – or rather, it wasn't paying attention to it.

Loki stared back at the suit or whatever it should be called, waiting for its next move. When nothing happened he wondered if this was his new guard. "What do you want, Stark?" he asked, unable to help himself. He may have been slow witted the first time they met but he knew the score this time and would try to somehow play the situation to his advantage.

There was no reply. Loki hadn't known the Armored Avenger was so capable of silence which led him to wonder if there was anyone inside the suit…

At that moment the suit's right arm moved, a blade sliding out of it. Loki wondered if he would be introduced to it soon. Perhaps Stark's personal need for vengeance drove him to dismiss what the Chitauri wanted, which was to provide Loki with a long suffering before the end.

The arm moved, swift and merciless, embedding the blade in the lock of the door and cutting it to pieces, forcing the door to open under force of that brutal strength. Loki waited, drawing himself taller, calculating his chances. He refused to die without a fight although he would rather not die at all.

The suit took a step back, one foot landing on top of the dead Chitauri.

The blade was withdrawn.

The glowing eyes met Loki's again, cold and lifeless, then the machine took off and disappeared down one hallway.

Loki released the breath he had been holding, carefully stepping to the open door. He could hear nothing. Whether it was a trick, or a trap, he didn't know. He wasn't going to waste the opportunity, however, and stepped out of his cell and took off, walking as fast and silently as he could, ignoring the pain in his body, determined to make the most of this.

He had survived worse.

He would prevail.

A group of Chitauri passed him a while later and he took shelter in a dark corner, waiting until they were out of sight before moving on. He needed to find a way to get out of here. Loki considered the possibility that they were in outer space, which meant he needed a space ship to travel to Earth. Then he would find his foolish oaf of a brother, heal his wounds and make sure he didn't get caught again.

He finally discovered the hangar and took a cautious look around. There was only one ship so he couldn't be picky. Quick as he could, Loki moved to the ship and slipped inside, trying to find the shortest way to the cockpit. A door he chose led to another prison area – or so it seemed. Loki caught a glimpse of people bound and chained to one wall, a sight which made him want to roll his eyes: the Warriors Three and Lady Sif were there, as well as Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye. So much for a great victory, which led him to wonder about the uneasiness of his captors.

Perhaps it had to do with the fact that the mini-mecha suit had just released him and didn't seem to have an issue with him walking out of his cell alive. Perhaps Stark wasn't as far gone as he had thought…

He was just about to move to the other side of the room where he could see another door, and perhaps release the others – who in turn would ensure his safe return to Earth – when he heard movement and quickly pressed into a crevice in the wall. The familiar figure of The Other passed him a moment later, along with the Chitauri he knew as The Engineer. The two entered the room and Loki peered in to see what they were doing.

Instead of approaching the prisoners, they went to the opposite wall. Loki dared to slip a bit further out of hiding to see what they were looking at, his eyes discovering a strange tank with a murky yellowish liquid inside – and a person floating within it.

"His mind struggles," The Other was saying in the tongue of the Chitauri – which Loki had learned to be able to communicate with his army. Well, what had been his army…

"It is easily pushed into place," The Engineer replied, appearing somewhat agitated despite its words. "However, it may be too soon to force his hand against the Avengers. It may push him over and he could be unreachable –"

"Unreachable?" The Other hissed, displeased.

The Engineer cowered slightly. "He is under our control, but pushing him too far… We should not risk it."

The Other appeared not to like this, snarling softly. "It would be his final test. To kill those who stood by him… Who failed him!" He turned to look at the captives, who clearly didn't understand a word that was being said – not even the Asgardians. "Very well. We shall dispatch of them, and you will rein him in."

"Yes," The Engineer agreed eagerly.

The two of them left, not speaking further. Loki waited until they were certainly gone before emerging. He knew better than to waste any time, seeing as his escape could be noticed at any moment. He entered the room, giving the tank another long look. He could make out Stark's prone form, dead to the world.

"Loki!" Volstagg announced his arrival.

Turning his attention to the warrior, Loki sneered at him. "Be quiet! Do you wish them to come back?"

"Loki," Sif repeated although in a whisper. "We thought you might not be alive. Thor –"

"I see he is not here," Loki commented.

"He was not captured," the Captain interrupted. "We thought you would be held prisoner."

"Do I not look like a prisoner to you?" Loki asked, incensed. "If you would rather I leave you here while I escape –"

Well, seeing as they were in the plane he was about to use to escape, that threat was somewhat pointless.

"We apologize," Fandral hurried to speak up. "Please, free us."

Loki examined the chain and wondered if he had the strength to break it, then looked around the room. There was no key in sight, no tools, and he knew better than to hope the mecha suit would come and help him out on this one. The thought made him look at the tank again with more intensity.

"Loki!" Volstagg reminded him of the task at hand, this time in a quieter tone. "Just magic the lock open."

"Don't you think I would have done that with my own cell if I had the strength?" he asked, insulted. However, he laid his palm against the chain and focused, trying to draw out the last of his power. If it was too much, these people better not leave him here or he would kill them all, painfully, if he ever got free again.

"Then how did you escape?" Hawkeye asked, suspicion in his voice.

"That is a story for another time," Loki mused. The metal was cooling beneath his palm and finally it cracked, cutting the chain in half and releasing the bound prisoners from the wall. Loki swiftly undid the bonds of Black Widow and Sif, knowing they would free the others – which they promptly did.

Captain America pushed to his feet once released and moved past Loki, not even a 'thank you' on his lips which was quite unlike him. Loki leaned against the wall, spent, watching as the man approached the tank swiftly and examined it for a moment. "Do you know how to… open this?"

Black Widow joined him, tugging at the top and finally the two of them forced the cover open. They stared inside and Loki felt like telling them to speed it up if they were determined to fish out their ally-turned-enemy before they took off. Finally the Captain sank his arms inside and pulled Stark's naked form to the surface. The man appeared to be heavily asleep or unconscious. He wasn't restrained, a healing wound on his stomach, and the only thing connecting him to the tank was something attached to the back of his neck. The Widow reached over carefully then yanked that something free and dropped the entire thing back into the tank.

"We must go," Sif announced needlessly.

"Let's get to it, then," Captain America commanded, holding Tony Stark's body firmly to his chest and looking out towards the door which Loki had been about to try when first entering the room.

They moved to it and down another narrow hallway, Sif helping Loki along when he felt like he might not be able to take another step. "Thor wanted to come after you, to find you," she explained. "He will be overjoyed when you return with us."

Loki didn't really care for that, as long as he lived past this experience.

When they finally found their way to the cockpit and its controls, the group fell silent at the sight of them.

"Can you fly this thing?" Hawkeye asked Loki.

Loki took a look around and sighed. "Yes." After his time spent with the Chitauri, he was familiar with some of their technology; he had always been one to pay attention – unlike some. What he had learned would have to be enough to get them into the air, out of the space ship and back to Earth.

First he closed the hatch, locking them all inside – and the Chitauri out, should any of them come to investigate. Having bought them a little time, he looked at the controls, trying to concentrate and recall the symbols. Asgardians had no use for machinery like this, but that wasn't a useful notion in this situation.

Once Loki thought he had the gist of it, he started the engines and got them into the air after a few rocky attempts; it was a good thing the hangar was empty save for their ship, giving him room to maneuver. He could sense the dreadful looks of the others but none broke the silence. Smart. This wasn't a moment to criticize his skills at flying.

Since no one was going to open any doors for them, Loki found the weapon controls and blasted their way through. The vacuum made their departure a bit shakier than it should have been and almost made the ship hit the wall on their way out, a scraping sound making him wince but the ship held and spun out into space.

Volstagg made a sound as if he might be sick and everyone clutched on for dear life as they rotated and artificial gravity pulled them this way and that.

Luckily, once out of the larger ship, they could see Earth directly beneath them and Loki didn't waste any time guiding their aircraft down towards it. If they were still alive after landing, he would be most pleased with himself.

_to be continued…_


	24. Chapter 23: Conviction

**Chapter 23: Conviction**

* * *

Flying had been his thing for the better part of Rhodey's life; not just a job but a calling, even before the Air Force.

Then Afghanistan happened, swiftly followed by Iron Man, and Rhodey had known it was about to change his life yet he had no idea how much, exactly.

When he actually became War Machine, some time after the battle against Whiplash and Hammer's drones, it was like turning a new page. He was still a pilot but his plane was something from a sci-fi movie, inspiring people's hopes and dreams. Being forced to step back from that and return to the cockpit of an ordinary aircraft shouldn't have filled him with such bitterness. It hadn't troubled him before, but then, he hadn't known he might never become War Machine again.

Tony's mecha suit had done a number on the armor. When he had finally been found and dragged to a new camp by Thor, he had known it was bad. The scientists took one look at the wreckage he had been forcefully pulled out of and he could see it on their faces.

His fingers tightened around the yoke and he forced himself to let go of the wave of disappointment and helpless rage. They might be able to fix the suit, it wasn't hopeless, and in the meanwhile he had a job to do: they had been hailed briefly from a location in the middle of nowhere and if the message had been interpreted correctly, Captain America and the other captives had managed to escape the Chitauri.

"We're getting close!" Bruce Banner called from the back.

Rhodey knew that and didn't bother to answer. He saw people moving from the corner of his eye: Banner and Thor, Jane Foster and Agent Hill. Pepper had wanted to come, too, but Rhodey was good at putting down his foot and Happy had agreed. If there was any news of Tony, they could wait a few hours.

Looking at the map, Rhodey started dropping the plane down, adjusting power and landing them as gracefully as possible on the rough terrain at the foot of a mountain. The Rockies rose up towards the sky beside them and Rhodey slid out of his seat to join the others at the hatch. He picked up his gun, checked it quickly, knowing as well as everyone else that this might be a trap.

The hatch hit the dirt and they cautiously stepped outside. The group had barely fanned out when there was movement and everyone pointed their weapons at it.

"Don't shoot," Clint Barton, Hawkeye, told them dryly then looked back over his shoulder. "Come on, rescue's here."

People began to move out from between rocks, following a path that couldn't be seen from below. It seemed everyone was alive, although bloodied and bruised. Thor let out a choked exclamation of joy and rushed forward – past Lady Sif and the Warriors Three – until he pulled Loki's battered form into his arms. It didn't seem that Loki much enjoyed the embrace but he didn't fight it either.

Among the last came Natasha, the Black Widow, and Captain America – who was carrying a limp form in his arms. Rhodey almost dropped his gun in shock, then moved forward, rushing over to them and peering at the unmoving form of the man who had perhaps been his best friend – as horrible as that sounded considering everything Tony had put him through in their time together, most of which Rhodey hadn't deserved to deal with.

It was hard to tell whether Tony was alive or not and Rhodey looked at the blue eyes of the super-soldier for confirmation. Steve granted him a small smile. "He lives."

"Oh, thank God," Rhodey exhaled although he would have preferred to show some restraint. "Get him inside, we have blankets." Tony was draped in what seemed like random articles of clothing that the others had been able to collect.

By that time Banner had hurried over as well, silent as he touched Tony's face, his neck, then exchanged a wordless look with Steve. Whether it was relief or something else, Rhodey couldn't tell – nor did he care.

They had rescued Tony. That was all that mattered to him.

* * *

When the news of Tony's retrieval reached Fury, the Director seemed to be of the opinion that they shouldn't return to the main base. _"There may be a risk involved we're not aware of, and we cannot compromise our few resources –"_

"Sir," Bruce had leaned over the screen with such intimidation that the people around him backed away a few feet. "The base has the best medical facilities available. We're bringing him in. He hasn't regained consciousness after being released and that worries me."

Steve didn't hear whether Fury replied – and if he did, it didn't make a difference. Rhodey flew them back, Clint sitting beside him in the cockpit. The two of them were talking in low voices, perhaps going over the events on the Chitauri ship.

Near the rear of the aircraft, the Asgardians were gathered, Jane trying to clean some of Loki's worst injuries.

"I don't need your mortal remedies," Loki was disagreeing.

"Let her help you, brother," Thor thundered, not loudly but making a point. Clearly he and Bruce were in the same boat right now, not taking shit from anyone. Loki let out a long-suffering sigh and offered Jane one of his hands which looked like someone had cut into it repeatedly, from elbow to wrist.

Steve smiled and looked at Tony who lay beside him on the bench, his head resting on Steve's thigh. For whatever reason, he was unwilling to move away from Tony. There was no danger, he knew that, but he had carried Tony this far and if there was a risk of something happening mid-flight… He couldn't let him slip away again. They couldn't lose him.

Bruce walked over and crouched beside Tony, checking his pulse again, counting for a moment before nodding in approval.

"Fury wasn't pleased," Steve said needlessly.

"He'll get over it," Bruce shrugged, tugging the blanket further over Tony's still form.

"Do you know what we're going to do next?" Steve asked carefully, voice low, barely above a whisper.

Bruce's fingers tapped his own knee restlessly for a moment before he simply sat on the floor next to Steve's feet, legs folded. "We'll figure it out," he finally replied, not really making it any clearer but Steve knew what he meant; they had to take things one step at a time and deal with whatever they came across.

* * *

Pepper couldn't stop crying.

They hadn't told her when the others returned, but when Rhodey showed up, she knew something had happened. She had expected the call to be a trap, that people had died, but Rhodey appeared unhurt and the way he sat down beside her, taking her hands…

"We found Tony. We brought him home."

For the first half-hour Pepper wasn't able to get up or otherwise move, but after that phase was over she was on her feet, rushing down hallways until she found the basement area where they had taken Tony. The room they had put him in looked more like a prison cell than anything else and she wanted to tell them to give him a proper room, the softest bed they had…

Then she saw him, really _saw_ him for the first time, naked beneath the sheet that had been pushed down to his waist. Tony appeared to be unconscious or asleep, his back turned to the door and the wide glass taking up most of the wall by the door was like a display window. She stopped, looking at him, counting the scars and that hideous thing that covered his spine.

Bruce was in the room with several other people. He looked like he was keeping watch, following everyone's movement as if dreading what would happen next.

"Pepper."

She turned, facing Steve Rogers who hadn't even gotten out of the uniform yet, the blue surface torn at places, dried blood and dirt marring it yet the wounds had already healed and turned to faint bruises.

"You found him," Pepper said, seeking re-confirmation.

Steve nodded then looked in through the window, his eyes following every person inside like a hawk – the same way Bruce was doing. She wondered what they saw, what they were expecting to happen.

Finally the other people left, leaving only Bruce inside and Pepper rushed in, not waiting for an invitation. She was distantly aware of Steve following her in but it wasn't important.

Sitting on the edge of the too-hard mattress, Pepper carefully touched Tony's cheek. It was slightly cold to the touch and she pulled the sheet up. Looking at Tony's face without the goatee that had persisted for what seemed like the better part of his adult life was strange. The thick, dark eyelashes were the same, though, his nose, his jaw, the unruly hair he sometimes didn't bother to tame.

Another wave of tears rushed Pepper's eyes and she leaned over Tony's form, burying her face in his shoulder and cried. She dimly noted a strange smell on his skin, almost like antiseptic but slightly alien, yet refused to let it bother her.

"Pepper…" Steve started.

"Give her a moment," Bruce interrupted. "She's waited a long time for this moment."

She didn't reply, or tell Bruce how right he was; she didn't have the words or the strength for them. Pepper simply focused on the warm exhales of air where her fingers were still on Tony's face and the slight rise and fall of his upper body.

* * *

Tony regained consciousness slowly. His head ached, in- and outside the base of his skull. To accompany that he also had a feeling something was wrong.

His mind rotated backwards, to the last thing he could remember.

The battle.

He had taken down War Machine while his creations and the Chitauri took care of what remained of the human army that had tried to overpower them. The Asgardians had slipped in close and he had felt the axe cut in with power that wasn't human – nor was the blade it carried.

He had thrown them back, securing their victory.

He had been bleeding.

Tony's hand shot down to his stomach. He felt bandages where the injury had been – where The Engineer had burned the wound shut, temporarily stopping the bleeding. The pain of the memory made his blood boil.

Bandages…

Tony opened his eyes, looking at the room. The Chitauri had no bandages, had no use for such things. What little materials they had found for Tony…

He rolled onto his back, feeling the harness press into a mattress. He kept moving and came to the edge of a bed, sitting up, knowing he wasn't on the ship anymore.

Wasn't in the stasis tank, either, his mind subdued against his will. He hadn't wanted it, hating the sensation of drowning before his mind would shut down and allow his body to heal. He recalled the captured enemies watching, the brief spark of resistance in his mind, but The Engineer had seen it coming and put him under.

There was no tank, no Chitauri, and Tony was perfectly aware of what must have happened: the captives had escaped. They had taken him with them. Why he was still alive, he wasn't sure, but they would pay for their mistake.

The door opened and armed guards entered. They carried the emblem of S.H.I.E.L.D. on their chests. Fury followed them, along with Agent Hill, and soon after the Avengers gathered there with their new allies and friends – and Pepper.

"You're awake," Fury noted needlessly and shot one hand out to stop Pepper from approaching, pushing her back. Happy and Rhodey stood behind her and Happy reached out to hold Pepper by the waist, a strange expression on his face.

Love. Concern.

Tony huffed. "How long did you wait, Hogan?" he asked. "Was our bed even cold yet from my absence before you climbed into it?"

Happy paled – as did Pepper. However, Pepper appeared horrified and on the verge of tears instead of deep shame.

"Give them a break," Rhodey snapped, pushing in and shoving Fury's hand to the side, unstoppable as he approached. "If you knew what everyone's been through, you would be happy they found some goddamn peace with each other."

"Rhodey…" Pepper murmured.

"We're going to settle this, once and for all," Rhodey went on furiously.

Tony rose to the challenge – literally – by standing up, throwing the sheet to the side.

Rhodey's posture changed just slightly, his eyes shifting. "Would someone bring him some goddamn clothes!?" he snapped, not moving his eyes from Tony although they may have wavered back and forth a little.

Tony had never been daunted by a little nudity. He was beyond it now. His broken body, made whole again – improved – wasn't a concern. "How's the suit?" Tony asked, teasing.

"Fucked up, thanks to you," Rhodey snapped.

"Okay, I think that's enough," Fury started.

Tony's eyes moved over his old friend's shoulder to the man who had pretended to need him, once. Of course Tony's life had been easy for Fury to discard, to throw away when it best served his interests. "And what do you have to say, Fury?" Tony narrowed his eyes at him.

"I need you to explain how exactly you fit into the equation," the Director shot back at him, just as unshaken as always. Nothing touched him, nothing mattered to him.

"You really haven't figured it out yet – or are you all in denial?" Tony asked. His eyes searched the group, wary expressions, fear in some cases – and then they landed on Bruce, which was… painful.

"You need to let us help you," the scientist started, voice soft, on the right side of broken, pleading, and Tony felt his chest tighten. Once upon a time…

"I don't need your help. Not anymore," Tony replied, moving to take a step back but the bed was right behind him so he couldn't do that.

"Whatever they did to you –" Fury started.

"You have no goddamn idea!" Tony shouted, pushing forward until he was practically leaning against Rhodey, because somehow stepping past him seemed like a waste of effort. "You left me behind, _sir_. I delivered the killing blow and that's where my usefulness ended in your book. All those years and speeches about doing something greater and I bought it. I forgot that I was being used and was fine with it –"

"Tony, that's not true," Steve started from the side where he stood with Bruce.

"How do you know?" Tony snapped. "You were cruising in the ice, Capsicle. And when you came around, you were the new golden boy, the one true soldier the world would ever need. Celebrated. Perfect in every way and ready to serve the country and her interests once more. I was obsolete, I always had been, but I pretended not to notice that. If I kept myself busy enough, it wouldn't catch up with me. I though maybe fighting alongside a living legend would change that but I was just as disposable as before."

"Tony, my God, stop saying that!" Pepper interjected, voice broken, tears in her eyes. "You were a hero –"

"As long as I served my purpose," Tony faced her. "Tell me, Virginia, how long you thought it would last? You had the company, you had kept it going for years. You were invested in it, deserved to have it. How long before I became the rock weighing you down, the kind that had to be dug out? How long before you realized you had just been dragging out the inevitable for years?"

"They really fucked you up," Rhodey murmured and Tony moved his eyes to focus on the face next to his. Their chests were brushing, the arc reactor throwing a glow between them.

"They just took the blindfold off," Tony told Rhodey then regarded the room in general. "I made promises before, about killing every last one of you. That hasn't changed." The armed men lifted their weapons, slightly, as if he was going to make good on that promise right that instant.

Fury looked almost disappointed. "I think we're done talking for the day."

"My friend," Thor pushed forward as the others begun to file out, only the Avengers appearing to want to stay, "they have twisted your mind. You are not the Tony Stark I knew."

"You didn't _know_ me; you wanted to kill me, just as much as I wanted to bash in that thick skull of yours," Tony argued. "We stood in each other's way. Just because we fought the same enemy… And he really wasn't the enemy, was he? You wanted to save Loki, to coddle him, to defend his actions."

"I'm not certain I would call it 'coddling'," a familiar voice teased from the back as Loki entered the room. He and Tony regarded each other for a long moment.

"You look healthy," Tony finally offered.

"No thanks to you," Loki sneered. "Then again…" he halted, frowning. "I think you're not being entirely honest with us."

"What do you mean?" Steve asked, taking a step forward. At the back of the room, securing the doorway no doubt, Clint and Natasha both shifted, alert.

"Tell me, Stark," Loki went on musing, "did you send your suit to set me free, or was that just a glitch in its programming?"

It was Tony's turn to frown. The God of Lies, that's what they called him, but why would Loki make up something like that? He bowed his head slightly, closing his eyes, reaching out.

"What do you mean, set you free?" Thor demanded to know.

"Is that how you escaped?" Clint pressed.

"I had already killed my guard but the suit opened the door for me," Loki explained.

Their voices grew muted as Tony reached out further, through painful static which might have been caused by some damage to the harness – or his brain – when he was taken out of the stasis tank. Finally he reached the Concordia unit, moving through it to access the small suit and…

He opened his eyes and let the air out of his lungs.

"Well?" Loki raised an eyebrow.

Tony was aware of the logic, saw the calculations and decisions: his final effort to get free, to avoid the tank, hadn't gone unnoticed. That last burst of message to his creations, to his children, had left its mark long after his mind was controlled and shut down by The Engineer. The suit had counted on Loki's release to ensure Tony's safety, which it had in a roundabout way. Damaged, the suit may have had trouble doing that on its own…

"Means to an end," Tony finally offered.

"We saw you fight them," Steve was the next to speak up. "The Chitauri."

"Children not wanting to see a dentist put up more of a fight," Tony countered. "What you saw was…"

He remembered the pain, the burning of skin.

It made him recall the day they cut off the suit, so long ago…

A hand on his shoulder jarred him out of it; Rhodey was looking at him, dark eyes sad. "Let us help you," he started.

Tony's hand shot up fast, taking him by the throat, lifting him up. He was stronger, better. "I stopped needing your help the day you left me floating in space," he sneered and threw Rhodey back. Thor and Steve caught him before he could fall to the floor.

"Tony," Bruce stepped forward, making Tony start slightly. He had expected the man to leave, to avoid this confrontation. "If we had known… We would have come for you, no matter where you were. We waited for as long as we could."

Steve looked incredibly guilty at those words, when Tony happened to look at him. Well, he had known it would be Cap's call. Their leader. The man they were supposed to trust.

How well had that ended for Tony?

"Let us help you," Bruce implored him, voice still soft, face so vulnerable, like that day in the lab.

Part of Tony itched to give in to him, to let Bruce do what he wanted.

He had come too far, though.

It was too late to make amends, to ask for forgiveness.

Tony turned his back on them all, crawled back onto the bed and sat there, staring resolutely at the wall. He heard them leave, slowly, one after another until the door closed and locked firmly behind them.

* * *

"He's insane," Benjamin Pollack decided once everyone had reviewed the security feed of their confrontation with Tony three times.

"He spent five years as a captive of an alien race hell-bent on traveling all the way to Earth to destroy us," Bruce argued. "If that doesn't mess you up… And we have no way of knowing what was done to him. That thing on his back and what you described the Chitauri doing to him on the ship – it appears they can control him, or at least shut down his mind."

"You forget that he created the mecha," Agent Hill noted. "He _created_ the machines that have been destroying human civilization even before the Chitauri bothered to come out of their ships."

"All a very good plan," Bruce tapped the edge of the table. The feed began to run again and he muted it with a flick of his other wrist. "Every move has been precise. Effective. But," he added thoughtfully, "not effective enough."

A wall of voices met his words.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked, louder than the others, making them fall silent.

"He could have ended this in a few weeks, if he wanted to. Crush the opposition, have the mecha destroy every last branch of government and military." Bruce lifted his hand from the table to his lips, then to his glasses, tugging them off, closing his eyes. "If he wanted to do that, he would have gutted us instead of letting this drag out. He knew where the Helicarriers were, which means he probably knew everything else worth knowing. That he stalled…"

"Maybe he wanted to savor his victory," Natasha offered.

"He's not savoring anything from that cell," Hill snapped.

Pepper gave her a particularly nasty look at her choice of words but Happy managed to keep her silent. The two of them had been close yet hushed after Tony's comments on their relationship, which was now very obvious to anyone who cared to look. Bruce didn't begrudge them that, and knew no one else really did either. He knew he might have tried something with Betty once again had she not died in the first wave of attacks…

Clearing his throat, Bruce pulled himself back to the present – and the fact that they had just been offered their greatest chance at victory. "I think," he started slowly, "that Tony's still in contact with the mecha."

A deafening silence followed before Fury's eye seemed to bulge slightly out of his skull. "Would you care to repeat that?"

"When Loki asked about his means of escape, it looked to me like Tony was reaching out. He seemed to be confirming Loki's story. That leads me to suspect that he's mentally linked to them – proof of which we've possibly seen before. We just didn't dare to go that far with our assumptions."

"We must evacuate," Agent Hill took a step away.

"What would it matter?" Steve mused, making her halt. "If he contacted the mecha to save him, he would have already summoned them here." He raised his eyes to look at Bruce. "He can't kill us all with his bare hands, so he would need the mecha to help him. But if they haven't come yet… Are we getting through to him?"

Bruce turned that over in his head. "Possibly. I wouldn't dare to go that far but I want to talk to him again. Alone," he added. "I think certain people bring out the worst sides of him and we had so little time together he doesn't have an axe to grind with me." He looked at the others, seeing guilty looks and stubborn expressions.

Steve nodded, though, which finalized it.

Pepper sniffed and let out a shuddery breath of air. Her eyes kept following the video that was still rolling soundlessly on a screen in the middle of the room. "If you need any help…"

"I'll ask for it," Bruce promised. He also knew that Pepper might not be the right person to talk to Tony right now, but luckily she seemed to know that as well.

With one last look at the people in the room, Bruce walked out. He stopped by the kitchen, getting some food, then walked down to the restricted area. There were a few guards down there and no one else, thick doors ensuring that Tony couldn't just walk out.

Those walls and doors would wouldn't stand a chance if the mecha came for him, though.

Bruce tapped a code into a lock by the door and entered. Tony was still sitting on the bed, facing the wall, as if he hadn't moved in the hours since he first woke up and talked to them.

"Are you hungry?" Bruce asked, setting the plate down on the far edge of the bed, careful not to move too close; he remembered a time, not too long ago, when he couldn't bear to be close to other people. Tony had to be feeling the same – at least when it wasn't on his terms.

He heard Tony sniff and slowly turn his head, staring at the plate. It was hard to tell from his expression what he was thinking but then he reached out, snatching a piece of bread from the plate and brought it up to his face, inhaling sharply as if he had missed such a simple smell.

Bruce wondered when he had last eaten. Five years ago? Could that be possible?

"They didn't have food that I could digest," Tony mused as if reading his mind. He nibbled on the bread, a couple days old but better than nothing. Better than most things people had to live on these days. "Half the time I expected them to open me up and… do something to my stomach, you know?" He munched on the bread a bit longer and Bruce didn't think to distract him from such a simple pleasure.

"You survived, though," he mused after a long while, leaning against a wall, still a good distance from Tony yet not too far to seem like he was avoiding him.

Tony lowered the remaining piece of bread and looked at him. "I did." His eyes wavered, moving to the side, looking at a scene Bruce couldn't imagine. It seemed his entire body shuddered in memory.

Bruce had plenty of those memories himself.

Tony looked back up at him again after a while. "Why are you here?"

"You know why," Bruce replied.

Tony played with the bread in his fingers and then lifted it to take another bite, munching carefully. Before all this, he would have probably not even touched such a simple piece of food. "What do you want to know?" Tony asked then, turning his head towards the plate as if searching for another treat.

"What's that thing on your back?" Bruce asked bluntly.

"I call it a harness. I don't know what it is, exactly." He chuckled then, a dry, humorless sound. "I know exactly what it is… I upgraded most of it," he mused and snatched an apple from the plate. It wasn't exactly fresh but still edible. Tony turned it in his hand, the bread still in the other one. "You never understand how limited a human body is until you take the next step along the evolutionary ladder."

"Is that what you did? Or had done to you?"

Tony froze again, that same shudder traveling across his body. His eyes were truly pained the next time he looked at Bruce. "Just ask," he forced out the words with visible effort.

"What did they do to you?" Bruce asked. He dreaded the answer, wasn't sure if this was the right time, but at least Tony was talking and not threatening to end his life.

Tony's gaze wavered again. He took another bite of the bread, attacking it almost viciously, swallowing with some difficulty. "The Engineer," he finally said, then laughed shortly, abruptly, as if it were an inside joke no one else was supposed to get. "It's fucked up, the name they chose to give him – the way it was translated to me. Irony, I suppose." He ate the rest of the bread, still toying with the apple in his free hand.

"I couldn't breathe their air," Tony went on after a moment, both hands holding the apple now, looking at it intently. "They jammed something down my throat." He lifted his face, staring at the wall, then moved one hand up. "You can feel it if you…" He suddenly turned towards Bruce, almost falling off the bed. "You can feel it if you try."

Bruce stepped forward, reaching out, replacing Tony's fingers on his throat with his own. He felt it, with every breath, every swallow.

"I prayed someone would get me out of the suit before I died inside it. When they ripped off the faceplate, I hoped…" Tony's eyes were wide, a bit glassy. "Suffocating to death wasn't pleasant, but I thought that was better than what would come after, right? Right…" He looked up at Bruce, face hardening. "They cut off the armor," he went on. "Burned my skin, cut into it. Careless. I kept swallowing down blood and hoping they would cut too deep, but they didn't."

Bruce didn't pull away, didn't move, didn't reply. Tony didn't need him to do those things, so he just kept his fingers on the other man's throat until Tony grabbed his hand and moved it to the back of his head.

"The Engineer… He made this. Pushing things into my brain, cutting my skin open, installing the harness. When I could finally understand them, it was all over. And then The Other started paying me nice little visits." Bruce's fingers flexed against the harness, caressing it, feeling it, finding the edge between it and Tony's skin. Seamless, it appeared. "Of all the people I've known in my life," Tony mused, voice stopping at a shivering whisper, "I think you know best what it feels like to have someone else in your head. Someone you don't want. Someone who's not supposed to be there."

Bruce nodded rigidly.

Tony blinked then smiled. "It's not so bad, though. Elevated consciousness. I felt… No, that was after I made them, after I gave them sentience," he muttered, looking away, grasping the apple tightly as if to tether himself to this moment. "My children, my beautiful children… I didn't want the others in my head, but them… They belonged there. They would always be there."

Bruce wasn't certain but he thought Tony might be talking about the mecha.

"The Chitauri… can they still get into your mind?" Bruce asked.

Tony's eyes were tinged with fury as he met his gaze. "The Other and The Engineer, yes. The others… they can communicate, I understand them, but they're not in my head. I would kill them if they tried."

Bruce nodded slowly. "You don't like the connection, though. To the… Other and the one who made you like this, The Engineer."

A dirty smile played on Tony's lips. "Some things are permanent, but you don't have to like them," he said.

"But if the harness were to be removed –"

"You can't remove it," Tony snapped. His fingers squeezed the apple hard enough to make a dent and release the last of its juice. "It's directly wired into my nervous system. Or is that why you're here? Did Fury send you to pry for a way to kill me?"

"I think a bullet in the head would do the trick," Bruce noted, not allowing his voice to show emotion. "A broken neck, although that would take a bit more force. A fatal wound." Tony clearly had reasons for keeping the harness, which led Bruce to assume it was his way of connecting himself with the mecha – to allow them into his mind, and his to theirs. That would explain a lot of things they had struggled to understand about the machines.

Tony gritted his teeth, clearly not happy about being reminded of his mortality. "You know you're all living on borrowed time."

"Until you call the mecha in here?" Bruce challenged him. "Your 'children'. Your creations."

Tony's eyes didn't waver this time.

Bruce shifted the hand still on the back of Tony's neck, spreading his fingers, touching skin with his fingertips. "You haven't called them yet, which means your conviction to kill us isn't as firm as you make it sound."

"Would you like to test that theory?" Tony's eyes narrowed to slits.

Bruce knew he could end up killing everyone in this base and he didn't even need to unleash the other guy to do that. "I'm not done talking to you yet. I want to take you somewhere before you decide to deliver the finishing blow."

Tony looked suspicious but glanced at the apple momentarily before lifting the hand holding it to his mouth, sucking the juices from his skin. "Okay," he murmured and Bruce leaned back, heading for the door.

Fury might want to tear him a new one for this but it was out of the Director's hands as far as Bruce was concerned. He had a feeling Tony had very few motives left to not kill them all but if curiosity and his brief companionship with Bruce helped to keep them all alive – and maybe even get their friend back – Fury would have to come to terms with that.

_to be continued…_


	25. Chapter 24: Empty Grave

**Chapter 24: Empty Grave**

* * *

**Malibu, CA**

As might have been expected, Fury almost blew a gasket at Bruce's plan. However, he was a smart guy and knew he couldn't change Bruce's mind about it so he just gave everyone in his vicinity one of those dark looks and let it happen.

The others Avengers were almost harder to convince but since their attempts to communicate with Tony always ended in death-threats and ill words, they had to agree Bruce was perhaps the only one who had a chance at getting through to Tony. It wasn't something Bruce was particularly proud of, seeing as he barely knew the man and had no issues with him because of that, but they were at war, facing possible extinction and he wasn't going to put up a fuss about why he was suddenly the one all this was riding on.

Their last visit to Malibu had been a cautious one. This one was no different, although they took a Quinjet as far as they dared, to minimize the time needed for traveling. They could fend off Chitauri if they were spotted and everyone grudgingly agreed that mecha might not be attacking them right now.

It didn't mean no one voiced concerns:

"We're delivering him back to his own doorstep," Clint muttered one night.

They were gathered behind a van, a small fire on the ground, the back doors of the vehicle wide open and giving them a view at Tony who sat alone in front, staring at nothing. He had been offered supper but he had yet to move over and join the rest of the group. Bruce would take him something to eat afterwards if he didn't join them at all.

"Let's not forget the fact that he can kill us at any time," Natasha mused.

"Yeah, that, too," the archer said unhappily, poking the ground with a stick. "I mean, it's great he hasn't gotten us killed yet but he sounded pretty determined to do so, and frankly, I would rather just shoot him dead right now –"

"Barton!" Steve barked.

Clint looked only half-chastised. "He wants you dead more than most of us, Cap."

Steve looked grim at the words, falling silent. Bruce gave him a careful look but knew better than to say something. Sadly, Clint was right; Tony's previously tense friendship with Steve hadn't gotten any better in his five years of captivity and Bruce sometimes feared that alone would make him turn on them.

But he hadn't, and Bruce had insisted that Steve should join them on their trip to Malibu.

"Why do you want to take us back into the enemy zone?" Thor asked, voice strangely hushed as if he had suddenly learned to speak quietly.

Bruce hadn't told any of them. Not that it was a surprise, but that last stretch of the journey he and Tony would take alone. "You'll learn about it when the time comes. For now it's enough that you make sure we get to our destination safely."

Rhodey, who had joined them, let out an unhappy sound. He didn't actively protest, though. Tony had threatened to kill him less than some other people, and although there clearly had been mistrust and problems between them, Rhodey had been the War Machine and that meant something.

They finished eating and Natasha took Clint with her out on patrol, to check the area around them. Her true agenda, most likely, was to make the archer cool off before he actually did as he had threatened and killed Tony.

Bruce gathered some of the remaining food and climbed into the van, moving across it and then squeezed into the front, taking the empty driver's seat next to Tony. "Here," he said and offered him the plate. Tony took it wordlessly, not even looking at it, his eyes glued to the sky. There was nothing but stars, far as Bruce could see, which was reassuring.

"You would think I've had my fill of stars," Tony spoke up. "They're different here, though. I recognize them. It's like I've been looking at them backwards for five years and now they make sense again." He frowned then plucked a piece of dried meat from the plate and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing mechanically. He had told Bruce of the substance he had been forced to eat until now, most of which he'd had to figure out for himself since the Chitauri had no understanding of human physiology. Feeding himself like a machine…

"We're close, aren't we?" Tony asked then, turning his face to look at Bruce across the dark cabin.

"Yeah."

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see tomorrow." Bruce closed his eyes, wondering if he could sleep a few more minutes than he had in the last few nights.

"Will the others join us?"

"No," Bruce replied.

"So, you're taking me on a date?"

Bruce smiled. "If that's how you want to see it, but I have to warn you, it will be the most horrible date of your life."

"Has to be pretty horrible to top all the bad ones I've had," Tony quipped back and Bruce opened his eyes to look at him. Tony had resumed watching the stars, slowly passing food from the plate to his mouth.

For a moment it was as if none of the horrors of the past few months had occurred.

Bruce knew better than to let his brain be lulled into a false sense of complacency, however – even for a second.

* * *

The next morning, as the sun was climbing and a heavy mist had settled over the open fields, Bruce and Tony separated from the group and began the last stretch of their journey on foot. The others had given them quiet looks but said nothing; they knew the Hulk would be more than capable of saving his own skin if the worst happened – not that Bruce was about to unleash the other guy. He had no idea how the monster would deal with Tony's presence. If he even knew him…

They walked up a long paved road until finally they came to a gate. It was still standing, miraculously, creaking as Bruce pushed it open. The mist hung heavy around them, clinging to the grass and the headstones, creating a rather eerie mood although the sun was climbing higher all the time, filling the world with light.

"I have to say you're probably the first person to bring me to a cemetery on a date," Tony commented.

Bruce smiled and wondered how the others hadn't figured out his plan. Well, perhaps Steve had; the others hadn't come here that often, far as Bruce knew. "Maybe it's a good thing this isn't a date, then."

"It isn't?" Tony didn't sound angry or upset. He looked around, almost curious, as if trying to guess Bruce's motivation. "Are we here so you can remind me of all the lives you've lost because of me? Of the horrible things I've done? That my mortal soul will never know peace?"

"Peace is overrated," Bruce told him. "And you know exactly what you've done. Eventually it will bother you, but that's not the point of our visit. I'm not going to guilt you into seeing things our way."

"Then what?"

"I'm here to try and explain what you've refused to hear so far."

"How is that different from trying to guilt me into changing my mind?"

Bruce led the way, not answering. He knew the steps even if he had never entered the cemetery from this direction. He knew the spot, found the right path and followed it. When he stopped, Tony halted behind him, still looking around. The mist had finally yielded to the warmth in the air, dissipating somewhat. It made their surroundings look beautiful, in a way. Peaceful. No sign of destruction or the decimation of the human race.

Tony had finally clued in as to why they were here: he was staring at the headstone directly in front of Bruce – the one with his name on it. The flowers on the grave had withered away since anyone had last been here, which was a shame.

"We buried you," Bruce said slowly. "Well, not you. It's empty. Someone suggested we bury the last armor you used but it seemed… It didn't feel right," he finally decided on the easy answer. He remembered that day, in too much detail. When he tore his eyes from the stone, Tony was still looking at it.

"People mourned for you, Tony, up till the day the attacks started. We missed you afterwards, too, because we were always one step behind the enemy when you weren't there." The irony of it all, now that they knew why exactly they had been overpowered, could have made him laugh manically before the inevitable tears started. He held it back.

"Each year they held a big memorial in New York City, to remember the dead and the one man who made a difference in our hour of need. The entire world knew you died a hero, to save us all, and while the true recollection of the fight may have faded, that memorial made sure no one really forgot about it.

"I attended the memorial the first year but it didn't feel right. None of those people knew you – none but a select few. I came here instead, before heading away again, and I've kept coming back every year since. I hated it that I couldn't stay away, couldn't fight it, but I never hated you for… I don't know, calling me home." He paused, trying to calculate what day it was. How close were they to that day? "Every year I would find that I wasn't alone. Every single year Steve came, like clockwork, finding me here."

Tony let out an angry breath but Bruce wasn't going to let it go this time.

"If you bothered to look at him, you would see the guilt he carries. Natasha may have shut the portal but Steve gave the order. He made the choice. Not knowing you survived, he suffocated himself with the idea that he should have done something different. That it was his call."

"It _was_ his call," Tony snapped.

"Of course it was," Bruce didn't back off. "Someone had to make it. But it doesn't mean he felt good about it, that he didn't want to change it every day. How long would you have waited if it was one of us – and don't tell me you would have just flown up to fish that person out of the portal?"

Tony seemed to be biting the inside of his cheek and looked unhappy. "Okay, so I shouldn't be mad at Rogers."

"That would be a start, yes," Bruce admitted.

Tony raised his eyes, away from the headstone and the empty grave beneath it. "Should I spare his life when I kill everyone else? Leave him as the last man standing? Would that make you happy?"

"Does it matter what makes me happy?" Bruce quirked an eyebrow in response.

"You're here with me, trying to convince me to forgive our fearless leader."

"He's not fearless, Tony."

The other man let out a deep sigh, looking annoyed. "Can we not talk about him?"

"Fine. But think about it," Bruce implored and they started to walk back.

"Did you ever get your strut on?" Tony asked after a bit. "Because I think you have more focus now. Not that you weren't doing badly during our first…" He fell silent mid-sentence, as if just realizing all the implications of his words; that these past couple of months he had been fighting the same people who had been, for a short while, his team. People he was supposed to trust, to rely on, and who would have had his back.

People who let him fly that damn nuke into the portal and didn't wait for him to fall back.

Bruce felt the old anger boil inside him again and had to stop and take a deep breath. Tony halted a few steps later, turning.

"The big guy?" he asked.

"No," Bruce shook his head. "A reminder."

"Of?"

"Of how we let you down." He opened his eyes and looked at Tony. He had to tell himself yet again this wasn't a mirage, that it was too real to be a dream or a hallucination.

Tony looked away and refused to meet his eyes until Bruce felt calm enough to continue and they found their way back to the gate, walking through it as it creaked ominously once more. Bruce turned to close it which earned him a chuckle from Tony. "What?"

"The world's ending and you're closing the gate," Tony mused.

Bruce fixed him with a steady look, wondering if it was too early – or too late – for what he wanted to say. He decided to say it anyway: "The end of the world depends on one thing: you. It's hardly something that cannot be averted."

Again Tony refused to look at him and continued in a similar fashion all the way to the car – where he got into the van and refused to talk to anyone.

"How did it go?" Steve asked quietly.

"I… really can't tell," Bruce sighed and clasped Steve's upper arm for a moment, then let it go and circled the vehicle to get in so that they could drive back to the Quinjet and return to base.

* * *

Steve wasn't certain whether there was a change in the air, or if he was simply being hopeful.

On the drive and flight back to the East Coast, he caught Tony staring at him several times. Whenever he caught the man doing it, Tony would boldly hold his gaze for a time before Steve either looked away or Tony appeared to grow bored of the entire thing – yet he would do it again, eventually. Whether he was simply plotting Steve's death was unclear, but the super-soldier liked to at least pretend most of the open animosity was gone from the other man's gaze.

Once they got back to base, Tony was escorted to his room. It was perhaps unnecessary but no one wanted him to wander around freely, either. Tony didn't complain, simply lying down on his bed and ignoring the others before he was left alone.

Fury, of course, wanted news of their trip to Malibu, right alongside Pepper and everyone else who had been left behind.

"It was boring," Clint joked mildly. "No one died." A few tired laughs were heard in response to his words.

"Are we any closer to winning him over?" Fury asked Bruce. They all knew Bruce had so far succeeded where the rest of them had failed, more or less, which was getting close to Tony and getting him talking about things that didn't include wiping them all off the face of the Earth.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that he's on our side but he's not as far gone as we may have feared," Bruce replied.

"Oh, good, now we can just forget how he's responsible for the deaths of a few million or so people," Benjamin Pollack muttered from his seat. No one told him he was wrong, because he wasn't; he had lost people he had cared about, just like everyone else. Those crimes would not go unnoticed but Steve felt they couldn't afford to think too far ahead at this juncture.

"What about the harness?" Fury went on. "Can it be removed?"

"No," Bruce replied quickly and adamantly.

"Long as he's wearing it, the Chitauri can control him, correct?" Jane clarified. "We should at least try –"

"We cannot be certain the harness is the only thing enabling the Chitauri to control him at will," Bruce argued. "Also, we don't have the tools to operate on that thing, and I absolutely refuse to touch it."

"You're not the only person who could do it," Agent Hill reminded him.

Bruce's face paled, just slightly, and Steve could see this conversation was going to a very bad place very fast. He stepped up, slightly between his teammate and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. "No one's touching the harness. It might kill Tony, and after that there's no certainty what will happen. Worst case scenario is that the mecha kill everyone, everywhere."

Fury nodded, looking grim.

Pepper looked relieved and gave Steve a small smile of thanks.

"So all of our lives depend on how well Dr. Banner can sweet-talk him into not attacking us?" Benjamin observed.

"That may not be our most pressing concern," a voice mused from the back and everyone turned to look at Loki, who was leaning against a wall somewhere behind Thor's back. The God of Thunder moved, revealing his adopted brother for their scrutiny.

"What do you mean?" Fury demanded to know.

"We stole from the Chitauri their most prized weapon – or the remote to the weapon," Loki noted. "If they are intent on destroying us, they'll come for him. That you managed to get to Malibu and back may have been good luck, Stark working in your favor or just a happy coincidence. If they've extracted any information from him, which I deem likely, the Chitauri will know enough of your resistance to track you down and start digging around for their lost ally."

Steve considered this and hated how likely it sounded. "Did you tell them anything?" he asked then, making everyone hold their breath.

Loki locked eyes with him, gaze dark and deeply unhappy. "They didn't need me to talk, Captain. I was your enemy once; I suppose they didn't think I had gotten so deep in your circle of trust."

"He would not lie to us," Thor vouched for Loki, confident in his trust.

"He better not be," Bruce replied.

Steve had a feeling that if Loki was the one who betrayed them – and Tony – to their enemy, the God of Lies was going to wish he had never escaped the Chitauri.

_to be continued…_


	26. Chapter 25: Reluctance and Loss

**Chapter 25: Reluctance and Loss**

* * *

It had been a few days since their visit to Malibu. Tony wouldn't admit it, but seeing his own grave was something you never thought you would do, yet what _had_ he expected? All of it made sense. None of it was shocking.

Of course they had buried him – or had a funeral without a body; the basic idea was the same.

Of course they made the Chitauri attack into another 9/11.

_Of course_ Tony was celebrated as a hero.

Well, the last bit wasn't a given fact but not unlike how the system worked; they would milk his life posthumously until there was nothing left to gain and Tony would get none of it. None of the real glory, none of the profit. They had thrown a party in his name and no one bothered to call him there, to check whether he might want to come. Story of his life. This time he had been a world away and couldn't crash said party, as was his custom. He couldn't go in uninvited and be greeted by all those fake smiles and sweaty handshakes.

He pushed his hands across his face. Tony realized he was creating an issue where none existed. It was becoming painfully apparent everyone had simply accepted he had died when the portal closed, immediately or soon after. They had acted on that belief and moved on.

Some of them had moved on a bit further than others.

"Tony?" Pepper asked from the door. "May I come in?"

Seeing as he was being held more or less as a prisoner, Tony arched an eyebrow at the question. Pepper was smart, she would know what the situation was really about, but she still waited as if his opinion mattered.

As if it had ever mattered.

"Sure," he finally replied and thought they should really bring in a chair or something. People kept visiting him but there was nothing to sit on besides the bed, and no one really wanted to sit on the bed. Well, Bruce did, sometimes, and Tony allowed that.

Pepper walked in and instead of the familiar _click_ of her heels, there was the muted sound of thick-soled hiking boots. Tony stared at them, deciding they looked wrong on her beautiful legs that were now covered by some ill-fitting pants which had definitely already seen their best days.

"Tony," she said again, as if he had drifted off the way he used to, deep within a myriad of thoughts.

"What?" he asked.

"I want you to understand… about Happy."

Tony looked up, digging for that pain of realization when he'd figured out what had happened. He had wondered, afterwards, whether she and Happy had always had a thing. Whether they had just waited for Tony to really fuck up or die. "I think it's very obvious," he noted.

"It's not!" she snapped, stomping one foot. There was no sharp _click_ this time either and the effect wasn't as firm, yet Tony caught it, the way he always did. "You were _gone_," she went on, pain in her voice.

Tony told himself she deserved it, every bit of it, yet he couldn't quite banish the stabbing sensation that he had made this happen and that he should make it better if he could. To make her feel better.

"We lost you, all of us," Pepper went on. Her hair looked dirty. Not _dirty_ but unkempt, like she hadn't been to a hairdresser for a while and wasn't eating the right things to keep it shining in the sun the way it used to, when they sat on the deck in Malibu or by the windows at sunset. "I couldn't sleep for weeks, thinking of how I missed that call, that _one_ call I could never get back. I couldn't function, but I had to put on a brave face, day after day, when things needed to be taken care of. Happy was there, every time I needed him. Every day of every year, he stood by me to help me cope with your loss."

"He stood pretty close, by the look of it," Tony huffed.

If he saw her hand coming, he didn't register it. She slapped him, hard – harder than ever before. It stung and her nails, although blunt and broken, scratched the skin of his jaw.

"How dare you, Anthony Stark!" she hissed, fury in her eyes as well as unshed tears. "He was your friend, too. Of course I realized, eventually, that he could make me happy. That he had seen me at my worst and we both deserved to be happy again. To not keep a ghost between us. Your memory did little to warm me at night, much as I tried, and every little thing reminded me of you. So did he, but it was one of the good things."

The tears were sliding down her cheeks now and her chest heaved. Well, it was partially hidden by the shirt she was wearing, another hideous article of clothing that hid all the right places. Tony might have fired her if she ever came near him looking like that, but he belatedly realized she couldn't just go shopping in the world he had recently created.

The world he had recently destroyed.

He lowered his eyes and she left a few seconds later.

Tony knew he didn't just imagine the sobs he heard coming from down the hall, seeing as Pepper had forgotten to close the door behind her. He slowly got up, walked over to it and pushed it shut, hearing the lock click into place, shutting him in. He then returned to the bed and laid down, staring at the ceiling, thinking back to the beginning of his capture.

How many of the beliefs circling his head were actually his own? _All of them_, he knew on some level.

How many of them were justified? How many of them were fair and honest?

Not all of them.

He closed his eyes and allowed his mind to drift, further away from the room and out into the open, tracking… tracking…

_"Sir, your location has been compromised."_

His eyes shot open. J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice still echoed in his head, clear as if he was back in his own workshop in Malibu. He knew the message was delayed, a little over a day old, having hung between them like an unopened email until Tony tapped into the units and finally received it.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rolled off it, moving to the door, touching the handle then ruefully smiled to himself. His hand tested the handle, in vain, and he leaned his forehead against the door, not quite banging against it but with sufficient force. Tony debated his own stupidity and then stepped back from the door, briefly glancing up at the hidden camera in the corner of the ceiling before moving back to the bed, sitting down, drawing up his legs and then simply waited.

* * *

"Pepper…" Happy shot up from his chair and rushed out of the room, to follow the woman as she walked past the doorway, still crying.

Talking to Tony was never a private matter; there were agents watching, as well as whoever happened to be interested in the feed. It had been hard to watch Pepper and Tony argue – as much as it could be called an argument – and Happy had braced himself while they waited for her to come back up.

Steve didn't envy either of their positions and wondered if Tony's return would break them apart. He hadn't known either of them prior to the war, only briefly meeting them after Tony's supposed death, yet he had grown to respect them and wanted to wish them well in the middle of all the chaos in the world.

"I have to hand it to her, I wouldn't have the guts to slap Tony right now," Natasha mused from the side.

"Really?" Clint asked, surprise written all over his features.

"He deserves a slap but I wouldn't dare to do that," Natasha shrugged. "Survival instinct and all that."

"He doesn't appear dangerous," Lady Sif frowned from her seat.

"It's not him I'm worried about," Natasha smiled briefly before her features went blank again.

Steve guessed she had a point. While the mecha might not be directly above them, attacking Tony's person might not go over well and could provoke an attack.

Bruce made no comment, head leaning heavily on one hand and looking like he might be falling asleep in his seat. He had been working on something, he always was these days, but Steve decided rest was more important. "Bruce," he called out carefully, making the man snap out of it. "Go to bed."

"I'm fine," the scientist replied at once. "Maybe I should go and talk to Tony."

"He seems fine," Clint observed, looking at the feed from his room. "Very peaceful. He didn't even try to escape."

"Maybe he finally knows we want to help him," Steve dared to hope, looking at Tony closing the door of his room and returning to the bed, lying down, closing his eyes.

"He sure does have a funny way of showing it," Jane Foster commented where she sat in Thor's lap – mostly because they didn't have chairs for everyone in the room.

"Our friend will see reason," Thor deemed. "He must know we are still his allies, regardless of his misdeeds."

Clint and Natasha exchanged looks; they all knew how forgiving Thor was when it came to Loki, so it came as no surprise he would be the first to grant Tony amnesty. Well, perhaps they shouldn't go that far, but Thor had lived a long time and perhaps he knew a thing or two about redemption.

Steve directed his eyes back to the screen then jumped at the same time as Tony opened his eyes and sat up on the bed, so quick it was as if someone had zapped him. Tony was on his feet immediately, striding over to the door and testing the lock. He appeared to smile when he leaned his head against it, then just as suddenly stepped back, looked straight at the camera and returned to the bed, sitting down, legs up and arms around them, staring steadily at the door.

"Do you think something's up?" Clint frowned at the screen.

"Maybe he just had a bad dream," Bruce mused thoughtfully, as if he could relate.

Steve wondered what Tony would dream about. Their deaths? The horrors he clearly had faced, so much of it left unsaid even when he revealed some of it to Bruce days ago? Well, if it had been a dream it probably hadn't been a good one; Steve knew that look, the shock of being _here_, instead of somewhere else.

Things seemed to calm down after Tony settled back on the bed and Steve went back to browsing the most recent batch of recon reports. It seemed that ever since the last battle – after Tony went under – the mecha hadn't been moving. That meant they also weren't destroying and killing, although there was one reported incident where a group of armed Mexicans at a US border – possibly not even related to the government – had tried to destroy a mecha where it stood. Suffice to say, there wasn't anyone left alive in the area to confirm what happened after, other than that while appearing to be shut down, the mecha would still defend itself from any threat.

The Chitauri had been moving around more, perhaps in pursuit of their lost captive. Steve refused to call Tony anything else, regardless of his cooperation with their enemy; he had seen men's minds destroyed beyond recognition, even before coming to the 21st century. He hoped Tony had enough of himself left that he would pull himself together –

Alarms went off so violently Steve almost fell from his seat, as did several other people. Sirens blared and people started rushing down the hallway outside the door. One of them stopped, coming in, red-faced and wide-eyed. "We're under attack!"

"Mecha?" Steve called back loudly, already up and reaching for his shield.

The man considered his question for a second. "No one's confirmed that yet, Captain." He took a breath and then went on: "Two Chitauri space ships are directly above us and a third one is closing in on our location. They know we're here."

The base was mostly underground, not looking like anything special from above. It had survived until now so there were only a few possibilities for how they could have been found.

"Steve," Bruce called out hastily. "Get Tony." He was already moving towards the door, looking a little green. His eyes were taking on a venomous tint when he grasped Steve's arm, tight. "Whatever happens, don't lose him."

Steve nodded and watched the other go, knowing he was only seconds from letting the Hulk out. Hopefully he could hold it in until he got to the surface, or else the rage monster might look for enemies in the wrong place. There were always risks involved with the Hulk, even in the middle of the war, and Bruce had been making sure everyone understood that.

While the other Avengers got their gear and headed for the door, Steve went in the other direction, taking the stairs and rushing down to the level where Tony was being held. He encountered several guards and told all of them to get topside and join the fight – or evacuate, whichever came first.

He keyed in the code to Tony's door and opened it, meeting his eyes immediately, as if Tony had been waiting for someone to come and get him.

"We need to leave," Steve told him. Down here the alarms were muted, far away in the distance.

"You know why they're here," Tony mused, slowly lowering his bare feet to the floor. Steve realized he would have to find Tony proper clothes.

"You're still here, so I think that means something," Steve replied as he tried to think of where the closest clothing storage was.

"For your sake, I hope you're right," Tony noted and got to his feet. An explosion from above rocked the walls slightly, which meant it had been a big one. Tony looked up, no doubt trying to look unconcerned but his mask was slipping.

"You don't really want to go with them, do you?" Steve challenged.

"The food here is better," Tony shrugged, lowering his eyes, meeting his gaze. It burned, laced with accusation and resentment Steve didn't fully understand, but it didn't hurt like it used to. As if Tony was letting it go, slowly.

Another explosion and Steve knew they were running out of time. He reached out, taking Tony's arm, and pulled him along, up to the stairs. He got to the floor where people slept and rushed them down another hallway, checking rooms, trying to find someone's clothing that might fit Tony: his thin pants and shirt wouldn't be enough outdoors, seeing as they might not be able to come back here.

Finally he came across a wardrobe that was close enough to Tony's size. There were even a pair of shoes and while Tony gave the garments a disdainful look, Steve didn't have to dress the man himself: Tony pulled on the clothes, slowly as if he had all the time in the world.

The air smelled faintly of smoke when they finally headed back to the stairs. They climbed up three more floors before the ceiling caved in and they had to move back down to find another way up. The hallways were quiet and abandoned. Items ranging from plates of food to books were strewn everywhere; people had abandoned them, knowing that getting to a gun and to a safer place was more important than whatever they had been doing.

Another stairwell lead them up two more floors before the air began to get hot, suggesting a possible fire on the next floor. Steve took them down another hallway, having memorized the layout and knowing at least four other alternative routes out. The sounds of battle grew clearer, the explosions rocking everything around them and making the ceiling crack slightly.

"I hope you know where you're going," Tony noted.

"Trust me," Steve reassured him.

"I wish I could."

"It's actually very simple," Steve said, stopping, making Tony almost run into him. "Just… trust me. That's it. There's nothing more to it than that."

Tony looked at him as if he had just offered him a paradox he couldn't solve.

The floor shook and the lights went out around them. They didn't flicker nor did they come back on. In the darkness it felt like the world was falling on top of them, or at least contemplating it.

Even through his clothes, Tony's arc reactor faintly lit up his upper body. After a moment had passed and the lights still hadn't come back on, Tony opened the shirt slightly to let the light out. "May I say you suck at rescuing people?" he mused.

"I wasn't rescuing you…"

"I think the general idea of keeping me here is to rescue me from the horrible brainwashing I've been subjected to."

In the strange light it was hard to tell whether or not Tony was being completely sarcastic. Steve knew they couldn't just stand here and wait until he figured it out. He turned, almost completely certain that was the way they had planned on going, then took a step. It was pitch black save for the light coming from Tony's chest, creating eerie, deep shadows which played on the walls.

"You sure that's the way out?" Tony asked from behind him. He had to be moving because the shadows changed – or maybe that was just him breathing.

"You have better information?" Steve asked, not wanting to snap but there was a war going on above them, the ceiling might cave in at any moment and he wasn't certain which way they had come. The air was getting warmer, stifling, as if the oxygen was running out slowly.

"Maybe," Tony mused.

"You know we might both die down here, right?" Steve whirled to look at him, leaning close. "Then what happens to your plans for killing us all?"

Tony's eyes flashed, either an illusion from the minimal light or Steve's imagination starting to run wild. Somewhere behind them – behind Tony – a cracking sound reached them. Concrete falling apart, metal bending. The air was filled with fine dust a moment later, tickling Steve's nose and he saw Tony brush his, in a desperate attempt to alleviate the sensation. They needed to get out of here, to get topside, so Steve grabbed Tony and pulled him along, away from the sounds of breaking walls. He hoped they hadn't been turned around and gone back the way they had come. He kept running into things, bruising his legs, hip and ribs a dozen times before Tony moved ahead of him, the little light they had giving an indication of jagged edges and other obstacles.

The hallway before them didn't look safe but Tony kept moving forward, one hand tracing a wall as if seeking guidance or finding support. They eventually reached a stairwell and Tony jumped over to it before Steve could even hesitate. They rushed up the stairs, past fallen debris until they reached the floor just beneath the surface.

That's where they found bodies, piled up on top of each other, guns exposed. It seemed the building that used to hide the entrance had been blown to pieces, the explosion taking out everyone in it – and beneath it.

Tony stopped, taking a step back, looking at the fresh corpses with an expression that was hard to decipher. It was hard to imagine this was what he had wanted – what he had been doing these past several months – but at the same time there was a cold, calculating air about him. Like it didn't touch him…

A light flashed above them, bright, and Steve saw the blurry shape of an aircraft passing them. The sounds of battle came and went, further away. A blinding flash of lightning, a roar – signs that Thor and the Hulk were still in the fight.

"We have to move," Steve said and climbed the broken steps, trying not to step on the dead but it was hard. When Tony didn't move to follow him immediately he grasped his arm, hard, pulling him along, a stumbling weight behind him. When they finally got to the surface, standing in the middle of a blast zone where the building had once stood, Steve cast Tony a quick look to make sure he was okay.

The brown eyes were gazing upwards, a far-away look on his face. A bead of sweat traveled down his temple. His brow began to furrow and he swallowed, then inhaled sharply, raggedly, as if he hadn't been breathing for a minute or two. His eyes snapped to Steve's face with such speed and intensity that he started, as if it was a physical thing. "They're here," Tony said, and there was no hiding the thick trembling of his voice.

Steve knew he meant the Chitauri because he could smell the undertone of fear. It was painfully clear Tony didn't want to go back with them and Steve didn't care why that was. He was past entertaining such small details, of trying to wring the truth out of Tony.

He watched as Tony's hand twitched, moving up to his head, hovering at his neck and then briefly touching the back of it where the harness began. It was as if he were trying to grasp something that wasn't there, or wanted to swat it away but knew he couldn't.

Steve recalled what Tony had told Bruce, about having someone in your head that didn't belong there.

Not planning to stand here and wait for it to happen, Steve grasped Tony by the arm again and pulled him along, moving as swiftly as he could, shield clutched tight on his arm and ready to defend them; he might not be able to protect Tony from the things inside his head but he would get them to safety.

As they emerged from the last standing ruins of the building, Steve immediately saw an immense hull of a space ship above them, blocking out the sky. Chitauri aircrafts were everywhere, the small ones they had battled in New York City years ago, as well as soldiers on foot. The fight was still going strong although the remaining soldiers and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had been forced to go into hiding. The Hulk seemed to be the only one who risked open ground, further off, alongside Thor and the Warriors Three. The Asgardians were ever so bold in their attack and Steve hoped they all survived this so that they could, once again, regale them with all their stories of great victories.

Steve heard a shot a moment before it hit him in the shoulder, forcing him forward. He caught himself before he hit the ground, pushing up and moving around to face an advancing group of Chitauri. He felt a burn radiate across his skin and allowed it to sharpen his concentration. "Get behind me," he ordered Tony.

The other man stood there, watching him. "They won't hurt me."

"I won't let them take you," Steve snapped, stepping forward, placing himself between Tony and the advancing enemy who were circling them now, making it impossible for Steve to shield Tony on his own. He felt a hand touch his shoulder where the Chitauri bullet had hit and snapped his head around, briefly, catching a glimpse of Tony drawing his hand back, blood on his fingers. Steve didn't feel the bleeding and counted on the serum to heal the injury before it would start slowing him down. Tony was looking at his fingers as if the blood were posing him an incredibly challenging question.

"I promised Bruce I wouldn't let them take you," Steve murmured.

Tony's eyes snapped up, meeting his once more. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, especially when the brown eyes moved on, looking at the Chitauri instead. As he did that, the Chitauri halted, holding their current position around them. Maybe they were communicating. Perhaps they were talking to Tony, not in words but in his head. Steve wanted to shout, to interrupt, to draw their attention to himself and disrupt the connection, whatever it was.

He wouldn't let them take Tony –

"Cap, get down!"

Bullets began to rain down on them and Steve barely had the time to pull Tony back and down, shifting the shield to protect them from the shots as he curled himself over the other man. The Chitauri raised their weapons, screaming, but most of them were cut down before they had time to react. The shots kept coming until the Chitauri were all down, some of them still twitching on the ground but most of them lying dead.

"Move it!" another shout met Steve's slightly ringing ears and he hauled Tony along with him, towards the sound, finding Natasha, Happy and Pepper behind a partially collapsed wall of yet another building that appeared to have been blown up from the inside. "You okay?" Natasha asked, sliding the magazine of her gun out and replacing it with a new one.

Steve nodded and glanced at Tony who appeared to be equally unhurt. "How are we doing?"

"Struggling," Happy groused. "They came on too quickly but there hasn't been a single mecha sighting." He looked at Tony when he reached that part of his report. Tony met his gaze, not bothering with the hostilities this time. "We're getting pounded and need to leave the area," Happy went on, shifting the weapon in his hands; it was heavy and big, sufficient to rain hell on anyone who got caught within its range.

"We feared you wouldn't make it back to the surface," Natasha mused. "I knew you could do it, though," she added.

Steve just nodded. "Where's Fury? We need to get organized and st–"

A Chitauri aircraft that had taken a hit sailed over them. Something fell from it, clattering around on the ground. Tony started moving before it stopped rotating, running away from it.

"Bomb!" Natasha cried and followed his example.

"Pepper, get down," Happy ordered and Steve threw himself down at the same time as they did.

The ground rippled at the explosion. Steve felt the impact, sensed the shield taking most of it as it shuddered in his grip. There were shouts and screams drowned out by the boom and the flying debris. He couldn't hear or see anything for a while afterwards, struggling to his feet as soon as he saw blurry shapes around him.

Someone was screaming, crying.

He stumbled towards it, blinking, the image getting clearer. The ringing went on in his ears, muting everything out. He tasted blood.

Shapes moved past him, towards the sound, and he finally made out something moving on the broken ground.

"Pepper!" Natasha's voice cried out. "Don't move…"

"Happy!" It was Pepper screaming, crying, shifting. Steve rubbed a hand over his eyes and finally the scene cleared slightly. Happy was lying unmoving on the ground, partially on top of Pepper whom he had tried to shield from the explosion. It was clear he was dead, his back a burnt, bleeding mass, debris embedded deep in the flesh.

Natasha pulled Pepper free from beneath the dead weight. Pepper tried to reach for Happy, to hold onto him, her entire body shaking. "She's hurt," Natasha observed hastily, looking up at Steve. "Can you carry her?"

"Yeah," Steve replied, tugging the shield off his arm.

"We can't leave him," Pepper was crying, fingers tightly clinging onto the shoulder of Happy's jacket when she finally reached it.

"He's gone," Tony's voice responded, sounding hollow and distant, removed from the situation. Steve spared him a glance while he handed the shield to Natasha in order to gather Pepper in his arms. Tony looked unscathed but there was something in his eyes that hadn't been there before.

Maybe it was finally hitting him.

"No!" Pepper shook her head, hair wild, blood in it. "Happy," she whimpered, sagging slightly, her body going rigid when the injuries began to register, her fingers spasming and releasing their grip on Happy. Steve took that moment and picked her up, feeling wetness on his fingers, smelling the blood and burnt skin. They couldn't treat her here, though. They had to find shelter.

Natasha got to her feet beside him, holding his shield. "Stark, we need to go," she snapped, harsh.

"Where are you going?" Tony asked, meeting her icy stare.

"Somewhere safer," she replied.

Tony huffed then glanced up, briefly, at the space ship that still hung over them. "This way," he said then and took off in the opposite direction than that which Steve would have chosen, yet he moved to follow him, Pepper's cries and whimpers slowly dying down against his chest. Natasha brought up the rear, wordless and quiet, a blank expression on her face.

He had no idea where they were going. It was entirely possible Tony was leading them into a trap, but when they finally skirted the edge of the battlefield and arrived in front of something that may have once upon a time been a shelter, it seemed Tony was on their side. They shuffled inside, finding that the shelter had already been raided, perhaps months ago, but it offered protection.

"I'll go and find supplies," Natasha offered. "Stay with her." She put the shield down and disappeared, leaving Steve at Pepper's side and Tony standing at the far wall, the glow of the arc reactor not catching his features this time.

Steve looked down at Pepper. Even in the weak light coming from the doorway it was easy to tell her injuries were extensive and she would be bleeding out soon. He tried to press down on the worst of them but there were too many. It was likely there were pieces of debris in her wounds as well, which needed to be dug out before they could stop the bleeding – none of which they could do without supplies.

He looked at Tony again, wondering if he could ask the man to come and help him, but by then Natasha returned with various other people, one of them a medical officer. Steve moved back to let them work on Pepper.

Tony remained in his corner, quiet and unresponsive to anything going on, be it muttered conversation or the battle still going on outside their temporary shelter.

Steve chose to stand guard by the door, sending a prayer out to anyone who might be listening but he could admit he had begun to lose faith in prayer some time after the war started.

_to be continued…_


	27. Chapter 26: Trust

**Chapter 26: Trust**

* * *

The fight had quieted outside, but it wasn't over; the Chitauri were waiting although their patience was being tested.

Tony felt an itch in the back of his mind, of someone grasping for control, but he was too far away for them to seize it. However, it was but a matter of time before they succeeded and he needed to stay alert, to block them.

The shelter had been lit with a few lamps, leaving plenty of shadows for people to hide in. Tony was hiding in one of them, seated in a corner, legs pulled up. His head felt heavy against his knees. In the distance, the Hulk roared and smashed his fist into something.

"Tony?"

He lifted his head at the weak calling, unfolding his legs and getting up, walking over to where Pepper had been laid out on a makeshift bed. She was covered in blankets to keep her as warm as possible. He could smell the blood on her, still. Her eyes were open, bright despite the weakness in her voice. Tony shuffled over the rest of the way and sat down beside her. She shifted her hand from under the blankets and Tony took it wordlessly.

It felt right, in this moment, in this place.

"Happy…" she started.

"He's gone," Tony replied, softer than he wanted to – softer than they deserved…

She blinked. Her eyes got brighter.

"Do you want me to go get his body?" he asked then, surprising himself. So many had been forced to be left behind. Tony had seen them, the fields of the dead left to rot in the open. Somehow it made him angry that Happy Hogan would be one of them; a man who had been his friend, his shield against unknown enemies.

Her lover.

"Did you love him?" Tony asked, despite himself.

"Am I dying?" Pepper shot back. Their eyes met and she seemed to find the answer on his face. "Yes, I loved him. Very much. More than I realized. I keep regretting I didn't see it sooner, that I forced myself to wait. We lost so much time waiting for the pain of your memory to fade… But it never faded, Tony," she whispered, a tear trickling down the right side of her face, then a matching one on the other side. Her chest heaved; she was in pain.

"The things you said," she started again after a moment.

"They don't matter," Tony interrupted her.

"Yes, they do," she tried to snap but didn't quite manage to get the desired effect. Tony submitted to it, though, not out of habit but out of respect. "I'm sorry," Pepper went on after a while, fighting to breathe evenly. "So many things went wrong between us. We… didn't always see eye to eye, I realize that. You might not want to believe it, but I tried to protect you… from yourself… from the rest of the world… I didn't always do it right."

"You did okay, Potts," Tony admitted.

She smiled but it didn't last. Her fingers untangled from his, trying to move up across the air, but she lacked the strength. Tony lifted his hand, taking her palm, bringing it up to his face. She smiled again as her fingers fanned out on his face, content to just lie there.

"Maybe one day you'll forgive us," she mused. "That we let you go. That we let you…"

Tony closed his eyes.

"They think it's too late, but I know you. I know what you're made of, and… Save the Earth, Tony," she pleaded. "You're the only one who can. Not the Avengers. Not Iron Man. _You_." Her breaths grew strained. Tony tightened his fingers around her hand. "Don't leave me alone," she whispered, the fear beginning to bleed through.

"I won't," Tony promised.

She drifted off soon after and Tony sat there, filled with discontent. People moved around, a medic checking her vitals once. Tony eventually opened his eyes, laid down her hand but kept holding it.

Three hours later her breaths grew shallow.

Another half an hour and she lay there, quiet and still, skin still warm but Tony knew she was dead.

"Would you like something to eat?" Jane Foster offered a while later, walking over. She stopped, hesitating, then seemed to realize what had happened. "Oh my God…" she gasped, then collected herself. "I'm so sorry. I know you and she…"

"Yeah," Tony bit out and finally let Pepper's hand go, standing up in one swift movement. Jane stumbled back, to get out of his way as he turned and walked to the door of the shelter, climbing up into the disgustingly beautiful morning.

"Tony?" Steve perked up at once. He and several other people were gathered in a circle, perhaps going over a plan. "How's Pepper?" he asked.

"Dead," Tony told him flatly.

Hurt slashed across Captain America's features but Tony had no interest in his apologies; they didn't know each other, and he hadn't known the real Pepper Potts either. In this fucked up world…

Tony's fists tightened, painfully, a few of the joints snapping in his fingers. His chest felt tight, a fire burning in it. The whispers were back in his head but he drove them out, focusing instead, pacing a small circle as his mind reached out in the other direction, seeking comfort and solace.

He wanted more than that. Needed more than that.

Tony stopped pacing and waited, patiently. He had all the time in the world, although he didn't need it. Not much longer…

The earth shook faintly. The pressure in his chest eased, just slightly, and he looked up at the space ship still hovering over the destroyed base, not one mile from their current position; the other two ships had either been shot down or had retreated to a safer distance, leaving this one behind to manage the situation. The Chitauri were growing restless, aware of his resistance. The Other would be most displeased.

Tony didn't give a fuck.

"Sir!" a soldier came running in from a vantage point on top of a partially collapsed building. "A mecha!"

Tony was aware of looks directed at his back, hot and burning like knives.

"He's killed us all," someone muttered.

"Tony?" Steve's voice rose above the commotion that followed the news. It was filled with questions and dread, yet he refused to elaborate. Was he willing to trust Tony to the end, refusing to cast doubt on his motives and actions – denying the genocide he had committed?

Concordia's massive, sleek body pushed through a five-story building, not bothering to walk past it. Tony's pulse picked up at the proximity and his mind melded with that of the machine he had created. Concordia didn't stop or slow down; it advanced on what was left of the base's above-ground structures, then leaned down to tug free a light mast that still stood tall in the middle of the destruction. Lifting it up, Concordia launched it like a javelin, the metal piercing the hull of the Chitauri ship with the force of the impact.

"Holy shit!" someone swore behind Tony's back. He wondered if someone was pointing a gun at his head, planning on threatening him to stop the unit – or mecha, as they called them. Really, who had come up with that name? Not that it wasn't fitting, really, and the geeky side of Tony could deal with it, but…

The Chitauri were scattering, coming out of their temporary hiding places. They seemed confused, uncertain, firing at Concordia.

The unit braced itself, leaning lower, legs working perfectly. Then, in one fluid motion that seemed impossible for something its size and weight, it launched itself up into the air, just high enough to grab hold of the low-flying space ship. Hauling itself up, Concordia dug in, clawed fingers slicing open the surface while the Chitauri scurried around it like ants, firing, feeding the inner charge Tony was so proud of creating. A bit longer and Concordia would reach the power core of the ship…

"Cover your eyes," he told the people around him, guessing it might be polite. "Take cover, too."

"What?" Steve asked, having appeared at his side, shield in hand.

"It's going to blow," Tony shrugged, then decided he might as well do the same and stepped behind Cap's shield.

The air ignited, the charge releasing itself. The space ship was blown into a million little pieces, the air filled with an explosion that could probably be seen from space. It was contained, however, the blast radius controlled as Concordia began to suck it back in, taking back what it needed and neutralizing the rest. However, such changes had an effect and gusts of wind kept hitting them, along with debris and burning parts of metal and Chitauri.

Steve was blinking, his eyes running; he clearly hadn't covered them in time. Tony patted him on the shoulder, watching as the space ship crashed down, Concordia emerging from its ruins with a victorious growl, shaking loose a few parts of machinery that clung to its form. Burnt corpses and broken vehicles crunched beneath its massive feet as it walked over and stopped short in front of Tony.

Craning his neck to look up at the unit's face, Tony smiled – then felt a hot stab of pain in his neck, piercing his brain. He cried out, fell to his knees, feeling something digging in.

It couldn't be real. His body was simply reacting to stimuli it had grown used to. That realization made it no easier to banish the sensation and he struggled, trying to find his own thoughts, a thread to follow.

"Tony!" a voice yelled in his ear, almost loud enough to burst an eardrum. "You must fight, my friend!"

He blinked, the world returning to him. People were gathered around, so intent on watching him they may have forgotten about Concordia hovering over them all.

"Which one was it?" Loki's voice broke through. Tony felt a hand on his temple and jerked back, not wanting anyone touching him, yet Loki's seemed to make his mind clearer.

"The Engineer," Tony grunted. The mauled Chitauri had always had a better grasp at controlling him from a distance.

"So it lives," Loki mused unhappily.

"They both live," Tony sighed, sitting his ass on the ground, catching his breath. "They weren't on the ship. But they're close, which means we must move."

"We can take them," Thor vowed.

"If they manage to take over Tony's mind, we cannot," Loki snapped back at him. "He just had one of his pets destroy an entire ship; they know they're losing him. They won't let this slide."

"Where should we go?" Steve asked then. "The base is gone. There's only so many places we can all hide –"

"The Helicarrier," Tony spat out.

"You destroyed them," Clint's voice joined the discussion.

"Not Fury's favorite," Tony informed them, looking up. "What, you think I didn't know one was left?"

Clint fingered his bow then glanced up at Concordia. "And how do we know you won't just unleash the mecha once we're there?"

"I've been on a falling Helicarrier once in my life; it's not a displeasure I want to repeat," Tony grunted and lifted himself. Hands steadied him, several pairs of eyes following his every move. "Where's Banner?" he asked then.

"The Hulk seems to be collecting skulls from the wreckage," Natasha reported.

"Call him in; I need Bruce," Tony snapped and turned, trying to get his bearings. The movement made him stumble face-first into Thor's massive chest.

Steve's familiar grip found its way to his waist and arm, pulling him back. "What do you need Bruce for?" he asked.

"We need to switch off the remote control," Tony explained.

"Remote control?"

"For a guy who's supposed to be on top of the situation, you're pretty slow," Tony glanced at the soldier over his shoulder.

Steve chewed on that for a moment. "Just a few days ago you were hell-bent on killing us all. What happened with that?"

"I may still change my mind," Tony started, then glanced up at Concordia. The truth was in there, buried deep in their minds should they forget… Not the truth he had been telling himself the past few years but the newfound realization. "I made a promise to someone," he murmured. Yinsen's face flashed in his mind, briefly, but was soon replaced by Pepper's desperate plea.

The ground trembled slightly as the Hulk jogged over. He didn't have a collection of skulls but it looked like he had done a fair bit of smashing since the attack on the base started. The mouth opened into a sneer and fists tightened, ready to pound, as the green eyes regarded the mecha. "Hulk smash robot!"

"No, you won't," Tony called out. "Come here, big guy."

The Hulk re-directed his gaze at Tony and took one step forward, looking like he might smash him instead. "Do you know who I am?" Tony asked.

The Hulk growled, from deep in his lungs.

Steve shifted, moving the shield, ready to jump between them by the looks of it.

The Hulk's muscles rippled, toes shifting in the rubble, the eyes locked on Tony.

"Do you know who I am?" Tony repeated.

A huff met his words, like an annoyed, bored child trying to weasel his way out of a situation. "Tony," the beast finally muttered, turning slightly away from him.

"Good," Tony let out the breath he had been holding. "Then you also know I need Banner. Smashing's over."

"Puny Banner cannot smash," the Hulk informed him.

"You're the man for that job," Tony agreed. "But I have a job for Banner, okay?"

Another half-hearted huff followed and the Hulk sat down, still frowning at the unmoving mecha. Slowly he began to shrink, turning a bit gray as the skin slowly adopted the human shade of pink. Eventually Bruce sat there, torn pants not covering anything of importance, a dazed expression on his face. When he blinked and looked up, noticing the shape standing above him, he almost jumped up to his feet in shock.

"Don't give yourself a stroke, Doc," Tony reassured him.

Bruce's head whipped around to look at him, then surveyed the area with expertise; to see what the other guy had been up to. "We took down a ship?" he looked at the huge pile of destruction.

"The mecha did," Steve informed him.

Bruce looked at Steve, then at Tony. A question was clear in his gaze, looking for the catch.

"Pepper's dead," Tony told him, knowing it was enough to explain things for the time being.

"I'm sorry," the scientist breathed out and got to his feet slowly, clutching at the pants until he realized it didn't make a difference whether he wore them or not. "What's next?" he asked.

"We're going to cut some strings," Tony told him.

* * *

It was late the next day when they finally got to the Helicarrier. Fury hadn't been happy about its location being compromised but once Tony described it to him, in detail, the Director had to accept Tony had already known where it was.

"How are we going to stay alive from here on out?" Agent Hill asked once they had all gathered in a room that could hold the necessary personnel.

"By changing the game," Tony replied.

"I didn't ask you," she snapped.

"You're welcome to leave," he fired back just as rapidly.

"You're the reason we're in this shit to begin with –"

"Enough!" Fury barked, looking exasperated. His eye pinned Tony down, attempting to once again draw answers out of him.

"As long as you don't have access to my brain, controlling me with the evil eye isn't going to work," Tony told him. "However," he went on pointedly, "there are two creatures on this planet who _can_ control my mind – from a distance."

"And how do we know those two creatures aren't controlling you right now, Mr. Stark?" a younger man asked from the side.

Tony wheeled to look at him, pinning him down with his stare, studying his character. The guy didn't back down, exactly, but he didn't look comfortable either.

"Benjamin, it's okay," Bruce calmed the man down then directed his attention to Tony as the moment dissolved. "The Other and The Engineer – two Chitauri in a leading position within their army." His hands slid over each other – just like the first time they met. Bruce looked at Tony again: "How close do they have to get to take control, or does the distance matter?"

"If they really want it, I don't know, but I assume they need to be closer than they are right now," Tony admitted slowly.

"But you don't know?" the guy, Benjamin, clarified.

"No," Tony spat in his direction. "I wasn't exactly given a manual."

"He's going to get us all killed – and he'll probably survive it, too. Of course he will, I mean, that's what he's here for, isn't he?! To kill every last one of us!"

"Mr. Pollack, please calm down or leave the room," Fury intervened.

The young man visibly restrained himself from hurling something at Tony, which was kind of amusing.

"I'm not sure I'm that comfortable with his change of heart either," Clint leaned forward. His bow was strapped to his back, he was almost out of arrows, but he didn't need any of those to kill Tony.

"None of us are," Natasha agreed. "But we have to roll with it."

"And when we roll into a landmine?" Clint challenged. "Just because they killed an ex-girlfriend whom he had vowed to kill, just like the rest of us, doesn't mean he's suddenly jumping into our boat!"

Voices began to rise and Tony reflexively looked at Bruce, who hadn't been that comfortable with all the tension and noise years ago and didn't look much better now. Well, he was doing a lot better, perhaps because of the things he had been forced through recently, but he still appeared a bit edgy. The brown eyes met Tony's and he stepped closer. "You said something about cutting strings," Bruce said, leaning closer to his ear to be heard over the commotion.

"We need to cut my connection to them," Tony nodded. "Otherwise it's just a matter of time before they get close enough, like at the base… and they won't give me another chance to slip."

"Why did they allow you free will to begin with?" Bruce frowned. "Trust me, I prefer this, but I'm the kind of guy who wants to look the gift horse in the mouth before accepting it."

Tony smiled at the half-assed attempt of a joke. "They needed me to operate the mecha," he revealed. "That could only be done with my mind at least relatively free. And I think this is the only time in five years that I've been thinking straight, ever since…" He fell silent, not wanting to think about it. How they had taken a look at him, all of him, and torn everything to pieces: every relationship, every disappointment, every betrayal. It was so easy to sink back into that dark abyss where nothing mattered and he might as well wipe the slate clean and start over.

The slate being the world.

"If we manage that," Bruce frowned, already running equations in his head, trying to see the way this was going to be done, "will it also severe the… physical connection?"

Obviously he had been told of what the others had seen on the ship.

Tony shook his head. "That can't be undone. If you plug in, there's no way around it."

"Unless we remove the harness."

"That's not on the table, even if you could," Tony shook his head.

_"Sir, engine preparations are completed,"_ a smooth voice penetrated the room, making everyone fall silent. _"All systems are responding."_

"Thanks, J.A.R.V.I.S.," Tony replied.

"What the hell?" Agent Hill started.

"J, lower the main hangar hatch before preparing for take-off," Tony went on. "It's time to board our last passenger."

Fury stepped over to the windows so fast others had to jump out of his way. "Stark, you have two seconds to explain –"

"J.A.R.V.I.S. is running your systems," Tony rolled his eyes at the obvious answer. Outside, the main hatch was lowering itself and Concordia crouched down beside it, climbing in. The hatch began to close behind the unit and its movements rocked the Helicarrier slightly.

"That mecha is on my ship," Fury noted needlessly.

"It's riding with us," Tony replied.

"How in the _hell_ did you gain control over our systems?!" Fury turned and was in his face before Tony could even blink.

"I broke in once," Tony noted, referring to his first visit to the Helicarrier – this very same one. "I left a few cookie crumbs waiting back then, and by the time the other Helicarriers went down, I had established that J.A.R.V.I.S. would be ready to slip in and complete taking over."

Agent Hill's hand started moving to her gun.

Fury just scowled. "That means the Chitauri can find us –"

"Please," Tony narrowed his eyes at him. "All that information – all your locations – are in my head, behind my access. Why do you think it took the Chitauri so long to pin down your secret base? They're not going to find you, nor can they because I'm the only one who can access the real data."

"Your trust issues haven't really improved since your days on Earth," Rhodey noted from the side. He was actually smiling, just a little.

"We're talking about… aliens… who tortured me and broke into my mind," Tony elaborated. "While they gave me the tools for my… revenge, or whatever the hell this was really all about, I didn't forget that. Once I had taken care of Earth, I would have cut them to pieces. I'm just skipping a step here."

"First we need to remove their access into _your_ mind," Bruce pointed out.

Around them the Helicarrier came to life, moving away from the shore and lifting off the water slowly.

"Yeah," Tony admitted, looking out the window for a moment. "No point thinking past that at this point."

"Why's that?" Steve asked.

"Because we only have one chance at it, and it might work, it might fail – or I'll die."

He didn't want to die but in this strange moment of clarity, when it felt like he was seeing straight for the first time in years, Tony knew what he had to do. And he might have to die in order to do it.

* * *

They had prepared a room in the med bay. It was just Tony and Bruce there – and Steve.

Steve knew he wasn't going to be needed, not for this, but he had been their leader – still was, in a sense – and he would stick around until they told him to leave.

"It could be their influence is fading as you spend time apart from them," Bruce was musing, looking at some readings and scans of the harness. The thing still made Steve uneasy, the alien aspects of it, but since they couldn't remove it, he knew he would take it in stride, just like the glowing circle in Tony's chest.

"Or maybe for the first time since my capture I actually want to think straight," Tony challenged.

Bruce glanced at him. "Do you believe that? That all you've done has been your own conscious decision? Killing billions? Killing everyone you ever knew and loved?"

"Didn't love a whole lot of people…"

"But there are a lot of people who loved you," Steve had to intervene. Both men looked at him, almost startled. For a big man, Steve still acted like the small one he had once been and he could become the wallflower very easily when he wanted. Now he shrugged, looking Tony in the eye. "I looked at all those people after you… after we _thought_ you died. I had to apologize to them and accept the fact they would hate me forever for what I allowed to happen."

"People hated Captain America? That's a first," Tony huffed.

"I was your leader and I stood by while you sacrificed your life," Steve recalled the moment, so clear even after all this time, after all the destruction. If that sacrifice had made Tony lose his mind and come back to avenge whatever wrong he had felt had been done to him, it was on Steve as well. He couldn't blame Tony for all of it.

"Okay," Bruce finally breathed out, "how are we going to do this? The harness makes no sense to me, not on such short notice."

Tony moved his hand, pointing a finger at the image on one of the screens. "There. You have to stab that spot, and you have to do it fast. If you miss it, the whole thing will heal and create an even harder scar-tissue which can't be penetrated. If you do it too slow, the same thing happens. You have one shot, and it has to be precise."

Bruce looked at the image then pulled his glasses from his face and stepped back. "One shot?"

Tony shrugged, looking grim. "It protects my nervous system."

"And The Engineer designed it to regenerate?"

"That is… mostly my own handiwork. I didn't like that people could just shoot me in the back and be done with it," Tony confessed.

Bruce closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath. "I'm not sure I can do it."

"You're the only one who can," Tony reassured him.

Bruce opened his eyes, more doubtful than Steve had ever seen him. After a long moment Bruce walked around the table and to Tony's back, touching the harness, knocking his knuckles against it. "How hard is it, on the inside?"

"It's compact and it will react to damage instantaneously," Tony responded. "The surface is the part you mostly need to worry about, because if you don't punch through it in one go, it's game over."

"And we can't just… drill a hole?"

"Too slow." Tony looked at him over his shoulder. "I upgraded it. It's not meant to be penetrated."

Bruce stepped back again. "I can't do it."

"Sure you can," Tony argued.

"No, I can't," Bruce's tone was final. "I don't have the strength. The other guy, maybe, but he's not exactly the precise type."

Tony's eyes darkened slightly. "You could try."

"There's no _try_ in this, Tony!" Bruce yelled suddenly. "It needs to be done in one go, you know that. You said that."

Tony's shoulders fell, just a little. He hung his head, looking away. Steve wondered if he was giving up, that they would have to come up with something else. Eventually he looked up again, shifted around, looking at the two of them. His eyes moved from Bruce to Steve and his arm reached out blindly, to a thin metal stake with a flat end on the table beside him; it was made of a very hard material, hard enough to punch through the harness. That's what Bruce would have used, but now…

"You do it," Tony spoke up suddenly, offering the stake in Steve's direction.

"What?" Steve blinked.

"You have steady hands, right? I know you have the strength," Tony went on earnestly.

"I do, but I don't know how –" Steve stammered. Suddenly the tool was in his fingers, Tony's grip making his hand curl around it, to hold it.

"Bruce will guide you through it," Tony promised.

Steve gave the man in question a look. He wasn't entirely convinced by what he saw, but they needed to do this.

"Okay," Tony pulled back and moved to lie on his stomach on the table.

Bruce moved closer, taking some more readings, scanning the harness once again, pinpointing the location Tony had showed. "Are we ready?"

Steve wanted to say no, wanted to back out of the room and come back when it was done.

"J.A.R.V.I.S.," Tony called out before Steve could actually bolt.

_"Yes, sir?"_

"If… if this doesn't go as planned," Tony started, lying his face on his folded arms, "everything's in place, right?"

_"Everything should be in order."_

"Okay," Tony sighed, closing his eyes, then opened them again after a while. He looked at Steve expectantly, waiting for him to move closer.

Steve shifted the stake in his hands. It was way too thick in his hold, for something that was supposed to go _into_ Tony. His palm was sweaty around it. There was no way he could do this –

"Steve?" Tony prodded.

"Yeah?" he managed.

"I trust you."

Steve's fingers tightened and he nodded. The air left him, then filled his lungs again and he felt calm – or calmer. He moved over to the table, laid his left hand on top of Tony's back, feeling both skin and harness. He looked at the image then at the real thing, not certain at all he could pull this off but Tony trusted him to do it right, and that meant he had to.

He positioned the stake, angling it, gripping it tight.

"Just so you know," Tony spoke up suddenly, almost making him flinch to the side, "it's going to hurt like hell and there's going to be a lot of blood."

Bruce and Steve looked at each other, after which Bruce laid his hands on Tony's shoulders while Steve pressed his weight against his lower back, bracing himself. His eyes looked at the image again, shifting his right had minutely, fingers clenching, preparing for impact.

"I trust you…" Tony muttered into his arms.

Steve lifted his hand and drove the metal stake down, as hard as he could. There was a sickening crack, as if he had broken a very thick egg. Tony screamed, his body jumping violently in pain he couldn't disguise as anything else. The spike sank for almost four inches before he stopped it. Blood gushed out, dark and thick, covering his fingers. Tony's body seized, jerking as if he were having a seizure and then stopped moving altogether.

"Is he –?" Steve's eyes shot up to get a better look.

Bruce moved to the side, turning Tony's face towards him, his fingers landing on his neck to check the pulse. "He's alive," he replied then rushed back down. "We need to stop the bleeding. Pull the spike back out."

"But won't that make the injury heal?" Steve asked, having already forgotten what he was supposed to do at this point. Had Tony ever even told them?

"He'll heal around it. Yank it out!" Bruce ordered and Steve did. There was even more blood coming out of Tony's back if possible, running from harness to skin, pooling on the table. Bruce found a towel and pressed it to the wound, pushing at it, the white cotton turning steadily redder.

The stake fell from Steve's hold and he looked down at his bloodied hands, wondering if the risk had been worth it. What if they had just lost Tony all over again?

When he looked up, he could see the exact same fear mirror itself in Bruce's eyes.

_to be continued…_


	28. Chapter 27: Edwin

**Chapter 27: Edwin**

* * *

**Three days later,  
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier  
Somewhere over the North Atlantic Ocean**

When Tony's consciousness began to pull itself together, he decided he didn't want to open his eyes. He didn't want to find himself caught again, tied down to experience a new wave of horrible pain he couldn't deal with and from which his mind couldn't pull away fast enough. His back hurt, feeling like it was literally on fire, and he could just imagine what had preceded that pain.

Only, he didn't want to imagine.

He wanted it to be gone, to be over, for it all to end, finally –

"I think he's coming to."

His eyes snapped open as if by the turn of a switch and the lights were dim, pleasantly so. A metallic clatter drew his attention and he noticed Clint Barton steadying a tray of instruments at his side, which he must have moved just a few seconds earlier.

"Hey," another familiar voice called out and Tony's eyes followed it to Bruce's face. "How do you feel?"

Tony just blinked and looked to the other side. He could see a flash of something that was probably Thor leaning against a wall, looking like he was sleeping while standing there, and Natasha at the door. Finally he found Steve Rogers, sitting in a chair by his bed – he hadn't actually noticed it was a bed until now. A nice, soft bed – not some horrible mix of cables and metal…

Steve offered him an uncertain, relieved smile and Tony looked back at Bruce. "I'm alive."

"Do you know if it worked?"

Tony frowned for a moment, trying to remember – then remembering all too vividly. He hadn't thought the pain would be so bad, so all-consuming, but usually when someone thrust a sharp object into your spine, or an extension of your spine, it was supposed to hurt.

He closed his eyes, focusing. It felt like something had been yanked loose in his mind, a piece missing. As if empty strings were hanging there, a reminder of whatever had been attached to them. "I think so…" he finally answered. He searched deeper, finding the familiar connection and briefly locked minds with Concordia, who was the closest unit, before drifting back towards the surface.

"There was a lot of blood," Steve noted from the side.

"I warned you," Tony looked at him again, trying to smile.

"A _lot_ of blood," the other man emphasized.

"Don't tell me Captain America fainted at the sight of a few drops," Tony chuckled.

"I would call it more than a few drops. We honestly thought you would bleed out," Bruce poked at his side, making Tony jump slightly and then settle down again as the pain worsened a little from the movement.

By the wall, Thor stirred from his sleep and marched over to the bed, looking overjoyed. "My friend, it is good to see you awake. Director Fury has been most annoyed that you had your disembodied voice fly his ship and everyone has been anxious for you to awaken."

Tony smiled then focused for a moment, connecting with J.A.R.V.I.S. It was so unfamiliar, to actually be able to access the AI, and he almost fell back into the old routine of talking out loud. However, his connection to his units allowed him to mentally access J.A.R.V.I.S. as well and he checked their current location. "We're on course," he finally revealed.

"Where are we going?" Natasha asked from her spot by the door. She had a knife in her hands, as if she was guarding the entrance.

"You'll see," Tony replied and pushed himself up to a sitting position. His head took a moment to sort itself out but eventually he felt like he might be able to stand. "Anyone have any clothes for me?"

Unsurprisingly, Bruce was the one to hand them to him.

* * *

"Stark's awake," Agent Hill informed him as she returned to the bridge. The entire area was eerily quiet; the few people who were around sat in silence, either looking outside or following the readings on the various screens.

The Helicarrier was flying itself and any attempts to gain control of the ship had failed. They would have still been working on it but once J.A.R.V.I.S. – Tony Stark's AI which Fury had first encountered in his Malibu house years ago – had revealed itself to be the one behind the takeover, Fury had been forced to admit they should wait and see what happened if Stark didn't make it, or, as it was, when he woke up. It hadn't pleased him to give up on the attempts to regain control of his surroundings but he had butted heads with J.A.R.V.I.S. before and had a feeling he may have hurt some digital feelings at some point.

"Did it work?" Fury asked his second-in-command.

"The Avengers are with him," Hill replied. "I'm sure we'll know soon enough."

As she had predicted, the Avengers, alongside their newly gained allies, soon arrived on the bridge. Stark was walking on his own, appearing a little pale but otherwise very much alive and functional. Fury gave him a long look – which the man soon returned; like so many people around them, Tony Stark's sudden change of heart had caught Fury off guard and he didn't trust this turn of events. He would take it, embrace it and exploit it, but that didn't mean he would stop remembering how things had stood just a few days ago.

Stark had been out for blood, had demonstrated he was capable of it, and they had a mecha in their cargo bay, curled up but ready to tear a hole in their hull at its master's first whim. Fury wasn't about to forget all the people he had lost when the Helicarriers went down, and as much as he wanted to believe Stark wasn't solely responsible…

"J.A.R.V.I.S.," Stark called out, casually moving on from Fury and walked past him, down the few steps and over to the wide windows.

_"At your service, sir,"_ the AI responded at once.

"Any complications?" Stark asked, glancing over his shoulder at the Avengers and assorted S.H.I.E.L.D. staff.

_"Very few, sir. I had to block outside attempts to access the mainframe and its sub-programs, for I believed your passengers were trying to force me out."_

Stark smiled, just a little, huffing out what may have been a suppressed laugh. "What's the ETA?"

_"Five hours and twenty-three minutes, sir."_

"Is Edwin awake?"

_"The Edwin unit is operational. However, the ship –"_

"I'll take care of that. Just get us there," Stark replied and looked out at the clouds. "Any sign of the Chitauri?"

_"None, sir. The shields are working and we are undetectable. I took the liberty of giving the satellites four shadow readings which may have led the Chitauri to look for us in the wrong places."_ There was a pause. _"The harness readings seem stable."_

Stark's fingers twitched and he shifted restlessly. "Yeah. It worked, I hope."

_"The damage has not been repaired perfectly, which I understand was the desired effect,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S. went on.

"Mmm…" Stark looked out wordlessly for a moment before turning back and walking over to the others. He gave Fury another long look, as if trying to figure out how much he had gotten out of that exchange.

"What's the next step?" Banner asked from the side, clearly reading the tension between them.

"Elimination," Stark replied smoothly, walking up to the table where they had once gathered. It showed exactly how wrong the current situation was that Loki was already seated at the table, feet propped up on another chair.

"That sounds promising," Hill said from the side. She hadn't trusted Stark when he first arrived on the Helicarrier, and recent events hadn't improved that in the slightest. Fury knew he would only have to hint in the right direction and she would shoot Stark between the eyes, no questions asked. She might even enjoy it.

Stark's eyes moved to the female agent, lips pursing. "I'm not going to sink this ship while I'm on it," he noted.

"That's reassuring," Hill shot back.

"He's on our side now," Rogers spoke up suddenly. He had never been on such good terms with Stark and Fury hadn't expected them to bond over genocide. Clearly anything could happen.

"He wasn't on our side just a few hours ago," Hill snapped. "He should be locked up and interrogated –"

"Not locked up and studied?" Stark raised an eyebrow.

"I'm sure a lot of people would like to dissect you," Hill offered him a dark smile. "In fact, I have a knife right here –"

The lights flickered, as did the screens.

"J," Stark called out, voice darker, eyes never moving from Hill's face. "She's playing with fire, I know, but ignore her. Well, ignore her _until_ she actually does take out that knife," he added, and it was all steel and darkness so deep Fury hadn't thought Stark had it in him. Apparently his captivity had upped the ante on what the Ten Rings had been capable of doing to him before. They had created a monster which was now thrashing in its leash, ready to bite at a hand offered in a friendly gesture; Stark didn't know friend from foe anymore.

"Where are we headed?" Romanoff asked, breaking the tension. "Clearly you have a plan."

"Elimination," Barton nodded along. He was fiddling with his bow and it would take him two heartbeats to notch an arrow and shoot.

"They'll figure it out soon," Stark began explaining. "We've broken their remote and they're going to retaliate."

"The Chitauri?" Thor clarified.

"Who else?" Loki rolled his eyes beside the other Asgardian. "They might already know. Also, if you failed, they might be slipping back into your mind as we speak."

The look Stark gave Loki suggested he would be happy to dispose of the God of Lies if he ever became a problem again. "Tell me again why you were helped to escape? I appear to have forgotten," Stark sneered.

"You knew the others might not make it back without me," Loki narrowed his eyes.

"Which is a crap excuse to –" Stark stopped mid-sentence, his expression freezing as if someone had pulled the plug on him.

"To what?" Loki challenged before he realized something was wrong. "Stark?"

"Is it happening? Are they taking over?" Barton shot up from his chair and aimed an arrow at Stark's head.

Fury took a step forward, not liking this. However, he motioned for Barton to wait, to see what happened next.

Stark blinked, a full-body shiver passing over his form and then he squeezed his eyes shut, clasped his head with both hands and sagged to the floor with a cut-off scream. His fingers clenched hard, nails digging in with a force that had to be painful. It might have been a trick of the light when the lamps flickered again but it looked almost as if the harness was briefly, not in its entirety but as if small waves were passing through it.

From deep within the Helicarrier, a groan reverberated.

Banner was up by then, crossing the distance between him and Stark but stopped a foot away to observe the situation.

Rogers was only a step behind, taking the last one without hesitation. "I thought it worked!" he exclaimed, lowering himself on one knee and touching Stark's shoulder.

"Maybe he didn't know," Banner started.

_"Sir,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke up suddenly, _"the secondary ship is under an attack from the Chitauri."_

"I know," Stark grunted, body tense as if he were in excruciating pain. "Fuck!" he shouted then went uncharacteristically silent, his body going lax, almost slumping to the floor before Rogers caught him and pulled him against his chest. Stark seemed oblivious, eyes opening slowly and a flicker of something covered his face. Like a screen hovering in the air, less than half an inch from his face, over his eyes.

"Secondary ship?" James Rhodes repeated. "By any chance does it happen to be the one parked outside the Malibu house?"

_"Indeed, Mr. Rhodes."_

"Then they must know we've broken their control over him," Romanoff concluded.

_"That would be the logical assumption, and Mr. Stark is verifying it."_ A silence followed and most eyes fell on Stark, still half-kneeling, half-slumped against Rogers' body, the constant flicker very apparent before his eyes.

"Anyone know what's going on in that head of his?" Barton finally asked.

"He's communicating with the mecha," Banner replied. "He has to be."

"There were mecha on that ship, right?" Rhodes looked at the scientist.

"It seems plausible. They were protecting it, as well as the house," Banner agreed.

Stark took a deep breath, suddenly, raising his head and the flicker disappeared. He blinked as if he had just woken up, eyes flashing at Rogers' proximity but he didn't comment on it.

"What happened?" Rhodes asked.

"They destroyed the house," Stark replied, taking another breath and then pushed himself to his feet. "The ship's damaged and sinking into the ocean."

"I'm… sorry," Rhodes stated slowly, as if he wasn't certain that was the right thing to say.

"It was to be expected," Stark muttered, his expression becoming far-away once more. "The units are safe, mostly. Under-water systems are working perfectly and the Chitauri know better than to attack them directly, so they'll wait."

"Wait for what?" Rogers asked, standing up as well.

"For me to pop up," Stark shrugged, coming back to the moment. He looked hard at Rogers, yet most of the animosity between them appeared to have disappeared. "I'm the key to controlling the units, they can't do it on their own. And," Stark gave a dramatic pause, "they would rather not risk open war against me."

"But if they choose to do so?" Thor asked, brow furrowed.

"They'll have a better chance of survival than you ever did," Stark shrugged as if didn't matter.

"Better?" Rogers grabbed his arm as if Stark were going to leave the scene.

"Doesn't mean they'll win, Cap," Stark clarified and Fury hoped that resolve lasted 'till the end.

* * *

The Helicarrier's landing raised a cloud of sand that was still whirling in the air when the doors opened and the first few people stepped out to investigate. Fury was still chapping his hide about becoming a passenger on his own ship, but Tony had long since stopped caring about the man's feelings on the matter.

They were here and nothing else mattered.

"Where are we?" Bruce asked, following the crowd into the wasteland of mountains and sand.

"Afghanistan," Fury snapped a reply from ahead of them and turned to look at Tony. "Is there a reason for this visit?"

"I would have thought you all of people would appreciate the deeper meaning of this carefully selected location," Tony shot back, striding past him. He hated this already, the memories of scrambling in the sand, without water, wounded, ready to pass out. Too afraid to stop in case someone survived the explosion in the Ten Rings camp but too tired to plan ahead _if_ someone actually came.

Just like last time, Rhodey showed up at his side, eyes dark, brow tight. "Why are we here, Tony?" He wasn't accusing, wasn't confused, but he wanted to hear the truth.

So much had happened between them, so much hurt and distrust, but Rhodey had always come back for him… Tony wondered which version of their past fallouts he wanted to go with – and how many of the darkest undertones weren't even of his own creation.

As more hours went by, free from the vicinity of the Chitauri, including The Other and The Engineer, the clearer he felt. Alive. The pain was still there, all of it, as well as the alien aspects of his own body he had tried to embrace – but which didn't always embrace him back. He hadn't been given a choice whether he wanted them to be part of his life – much like when the predecessor of the arc reactor was buried in his chest in order to prolong his life. Perhaps that was why he had strived to change most of the new applications; so they were more familiar to him, made in his own image, by his own hands, and in turn they would become more in tune with the rest of his changed physiology.

There were a few things that wouldn't stop bugging him, though, until he had finished what he had set out to do after Pepper died.

Something was… wrong with that concept; he had envisioned their deaths, all of theirs, so many times. However, the more Tony thought about it, the more he started to notice there was a growing list of names and faces he hadn't thought about precisely; he had skirted around them, added them to the list, but he couldn't bring himself to actually detail their last moments.

If they happened to die in a collapsing building or an explosion, he didn't have to think about it.

"This way," he noted, snapping his fingers. Behind them, within the Helicarrier, Concordia was activated and rose, sliding out of the ship and taking its first steps in the sand. The unit looked around, scanning the area, then fell into step beside them – which meant taking a step and stopping for a minute before the next movement.

Fury signaled most of the remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel to remain at the Helicarrier. No doubt they would once again try to lock J.A.R.V.I.S. out but Tony knew they would fail. Being dead had allowed him to operate undetected, after all, and he was so far up Fury's metaphorical ass the man couldn't just push him out.

Cringing at the mental image, Tony moved on, faster than the others. They climbed up a hill onto a rocky rise over the land, ending up staring at another vast field of sand which extended for miles ahead of them.

"As much as I like a nice walk outdoors, I'm getting tired of the sand inside my shoes," Clint complained.

Tony paid him no mind. He took a steadying breath then focused, allowing his mind to wander outside its usual borders. He felt the stirring deep in his gut, rising from the depths and pressing upwards. A response hit him like a wave that didn't stir his skin but seeped into his insides. A tingling sensation followed, as if someone had suddenly boosted the harness and the arc reactor at the same time. He felt like he was glowing, the pressure rising. Tony lifted his arms along with it, out to his sides, higher and higher, and as he did that, the vast scene of wind-touched sand began to bulge and shift, rising, tumbling and falling back down as a giant space ship emerged from the depths.

There was no sound he could hear, but then, his mind wasn't truly in the moment. When Tony finally looked around, the others looked alarmed and amazed, weapons raised.

"You could give a guy some warning," Rhodey muttered. "I thought it was a fucking earthquake."

Tony attempted a sheepish smile then turned in time to see one of the ship's sides beginning to unfold, unlocking and sliding back to reveal a huge opening. Concordia stepped towards it, issuing a sound in greeting then strode over, effortlessly climbing in and disappearing inside. The ship swallowed the giant machine, the unit's gigantic form small in comparison.

"So… the ship in Malibu _was_ secondary," Bruce finally caught on. "You hid the more important one."

"You make me sound like the Easter Bunny, but yeah, it made sense to hide one of them should you be able to attack the other. And…" Tony stopped and breathed in, then started walking towards the ship. "I'll show you."

The others followed in silence, stumbling over the sand until they reached the huge doorway. The space ship had powered down for now, sitting in the sand, looking like it had always been there. Tony, however, had seen this thing in space so it hardly fit in in an Afghan desert.

"This thing is huge," Clint commented, bow in hand as he slowly turned around while walking, trying to assess the circumference of the ship's area.

They entered a circular room, triggering a wave of memories in Tony. It felt like a lifetime ago since he last looked at the nests, the units inside still untested in battle. Now most of them were empty, although Concordia had entered its own. The one beside it was empty, however, and Tony looked around, opening his mind, summoning the nest's occupant.

Footsteps rocked the floor and everyone looked to the side, seeing another unit approach them from a shadowy corridor. Its body was large like Concordia's, similar yet entirely different in design.

"Look at its chest," Natasha whispered.

"Meet Edwin, the first of my… children," Tony introduced, halting for a moment at the last word. No one laughed, not at this point when the large machine stopped before them, glowing eyes regarding them all. Only Tony was met with fondness, although he was the only one who could tell the difference. Tony reached up and the unit leaned down until his hand could touch its angular face. The glowing eyes changed color, just slightly, and he could feel tremors on its surface; a charge from the arc reactor in its chest, in tune with his own.

"Had the other ones looked like this, we would have been able to tell you designed them from day one," Clint pointed out dryly.

"That was the point," Tony scoffed. "Edwin was the first one I made. It represents too much of myself, of my old life, but at the same time it's special."

"Special how?" Bruce asked.

"Edwin's stronger. The power output, physical strength, materials… the bond with me," Tony listed. "Edwin and Concordia are two sides of the same coin, the full circle. The beginning and the end of a journey." He kept caressing the metal face, giant against his hand. Their minds were melding, trading information.

"Why didn't you use Edwin in battle, after your involvement was revealed, if it's so much stronger?" Fury asked.

Tony shrugged and dropped his hand. He watched Edwin as the unit straightened its body and kept looking down at them for a moment before moving to its nest and starting to check out Concordia's memories, experiences and injuries for future reference. "Edwin was never perfected like the others. Like I said, it represented things I didn't want to recall, but… I told the Chitauri Edwin was flawed, that it couldn't operate."

"Even though it could?" Fury pressed.

"Yes," Tony admitted. "Of all of them, Edwin was the most prepared."

"Maybe that's just it," Bruce started in a thoughtful tone, looking at the two interacting units. "You knew its destructive power and deep inside… you didn't want to use it against us. Perhaps it was flawed, maybe its design wasn't in tune with the others, but all those are excuses in the end." Bruce looked directly at Tony. "Edwin could have ended the war, right?"

Tony nodded slowly. "I didn't need it to. I could have…"

"But you didn't."

Tony pursed his lips. He hadn't. He had stalled, had hesitated, sometimes without even thinking about it. He had told himself he was just toying with his food before swallowing, taking his time to exact revenge, to make those who had wronged him suffer. But when it came down to making the decisive cut…

_"Sir,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice thankfully interrupted his need to reply, _"I have successfully downloaded the necessary parts of myself to the ship's database. Are the plans for integration still in effect?"_

"Yeah," Tony snapped out of it, glancing at the others. "There's… a few updates I need to do. Fail-safes. You can return to the Helicarrier or stay here."

"And if we stay here?" Fury asked.

"You'll have to find something to do for a few hours," Tony shrugged.

_"Preparing installation,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice echoed across the space.

Tony walked to the center of the round room, a hatch opening in the floor. He pulled out a thick wire which looked like a coaxial cable – only with a large needle in its end. He knelt down and tugged aside the back of his shirt at the neck, taking a deep breath.

_"You are certain of this, sir?"_ the AI asked.

"You'll enjoy the change," Tony promised. "A vast new world with the units connected to you…"

_"Frankly, sir, the thing I am looking forward to most is the integration with _your_ mind."_

Tony smiled as he placed the needle at the back of his neck and pushed it into the harness, the pain dulled as the harness accepted it and locked onto the signal it provided.

_"Beginning system integration in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…"_

Tony's conscious mind turned off before he rolled over onto the floor.

* * *

"Did J.A.R.V.I.S. just say what I think he said?" Rhodey exclaimed when Tony all but collapsed and lay still in the middle of the room.

Bruce blinked then hurried over, moving the man slightly and checking his pulse. Tony's eyes were closed, his face peaceful. In all the ways Bruce could tell, Tony was merely asleep or unconscious with that strange bundle of wires attached to the back of his neck. Bruce looked up next, studying the two mecha in their niches on the wall that looked almost like nests.

"Doctor?" Fury's voice called his attention back to the present.

"Uhh… he's fine, as far as I can tell. We don't completely understand the way he's communicating with the mecha but it seems like a mental link, which means he might be…" He recalled the short discussion. "He's allowing J.A.R.V.I.S. to access his mind, and the other way around. It's all just… It's not so different; the mecha are machines with sentient capabilities, which is essentially what J.A.R.V.I.S. is: programming."

"So while Stark's taking a nap, what are we going to do?" Clint asked restlessly. The mecha hadn't moved since Tony dropped but that didn't mean they would stay like that.

_"There is something I would like to bring to your attention,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice responded before anyone else could. _"When the ship was raised, it would appear one of the Chitauri space ships in orbit caught a glimpse of it. The Chitauri now know the location of the ship and will assume this is where Mr. Stark will be hiding."_

"What do you need us to do?" Steve asked, looking up as if searching for something to talk to.

_"Please ensure the safety of the ship for the next hour and fifty-two minutes. That should give us enough time to complete system integration and prepare a response."_

"We will do that," Steve nodded even though Bruce didn't want to guess how they would fend off a Chitauri armada should they reach their location before Tony recovered. "J.A.R.V.I.S.," Steve called out before anyone had time to move or ask whether he had a plan. "Is… Tony okay?"

_"Mr. Stark is fine. Would you like to speak with him? He is currently occupied, helping me merge with the ship and the unit systems before directly connecting with his own mind –"_

"No, it's fine," Steve declined swiftly. "Just make sure he doesn't… get hurt."

_"That is my first priority, Captain Rogers."_

"That was cozy," Clint rolled his eyes once J.A.R.V.I.S. fell silent again.

Bruce just smiled and took off his jacket, laying it across Tony's upper body in case he got cold. "We have two hours," he stated, standing up and facing their leader.

Steve nodded and looked at the others. "Check the perimeter. The rest can return to the Helicarrier," he added, glancing at Jane and Darcy.

"We've never had such a chance to take a look at the Chitauri technology," Jane argued at once, already moving off to the side.

"We can't just poke around the ship!" Darcy said quickly. "It could… explode."

"Don't be silly," Jane snapped.

"We can take a look," Bruce acquiesced. "But just a look. If J.A.R.V.I.S. is aware, I'm sure he'll tell us when to stop."

Darcy let out a long-suffering sigh but followed Jane when the woman headed over to a wall to take a look at the nests and the hallway from which Edwin had emerged.

"Keep them safe," Thor vowed. "I shall take my fellow Asgardians and see that no enemy ship gets close enough to put us in danger." Loki looked most unhappy about this but Sif and the Warriors Three were already preparing their weapons.

"We'll meet back here in two hours," Steve decided, taking his shield and casting one last look at Tony. "I'll… guard the door."

"He'll be fine," Bruce reassured him. "I'm sure the mecha are fully operational even though they're not doing anything right now; go and secure the premises with the others. I'll stay on the ship with Jane and Darcy."

Steve nodded his thanks and led the others back out, leaving Bruce to catch up with over-excited Jane and concerned-looking Darcy. He shared the younger woman's apprehension yet he felt like this was the only Chitauri-related space craft they might actually be safe to be around.

Soon enough they would see how correct that assumption was.

_to be continued…_


	29. Chapter 28: The Weapon

**Chapter 28: The Weapon**

* * *

Tony awakened with a painful start, his lungs burning as if he had forgotten to breathe recently. He gasped and rolled over onto his stomach, the floor hard beneath him. Something slipped along his shoulder, warm yet not entirely soft. He reached up for it, tugging it down. A jacket. Bruce's jacket, to be exact; the one he had been wearing earlier.

Blinking slowly and adjusting his eyes to see the physical world again, Tony craned his neck to look around, feeling an immediate pressure and an itch in his chest which made him retch for a moment.

_"Sir,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S. called out, both in his mind and within the interior of the ship.

"Give me a moment."

_"Your body language suggests –"_

"Discomfort, yes. It's not… serious," Tony finally managed to push himself to his knees then reached back to pull out the needle and threw it and the wire it was attached to away from him. It was like plugging in during the wireless age but some things worked better with cables attached…

Tony looked around. Edwin and Concordia were still there.

_"Doctor Banner, Ms. Foster and Ms. Lewis are exploring the ship. Shall I guide them back towards you?"_ J.A.R.V.I.S. asked, knowing what he was looking for.

"Sure," Tony sighed and closed his eyes again. His neck was prickling, his head hurt, and it felt like parts of his body were numb although he could move them. "The others?" he asked.

_"Securing the area. The Chitauri have not yet reached our location but the first of their ships is not far away. Estimated time of arrival is in one hour and twenty-two minutes."_

"Plenty of time to spare," Tony commented and pushed himself up to his feet regardless of the disorientation. In the nests, Edwin and Concordia shifted, both aware of his discomfort. Tony threw them a quick look, a smile, then turned his head a bit too quickly when Bruce led the two women back into the large, circular room.

"You're awake," Bruce noted, stating the obvious. "Did it work, whatever you were doing?"

"Yeah, although I'm beginning to regret it," Tony grimaced.

_"Mr. Stark is jesting; he's most pleased with the upgrades,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S. argued.

"Maybe I'm just not telling you," Tony shot back.

_"You can hardly conceal anything from me anymore, sir, which I consider a vast improvement to our relationship."_

"It's like getting married," Tony muttered.

"You… connected your brain to your AI?" Jane asked slowly. "Why would you do that?"

"Maximum efficiency," Tony shrugged. "I don't have to tell him what to do anymore; he'll know it. Plus my brain, the units, J.A.R.V.I.S. and the ship are more or less in perfect synch now. Which reminds me: we have to secure the Helicarrier unless we want it blown sky high when the Chitauri arrive."

"Sounds like a plan Fury will appreciate," Darcy nodded. "He was so pissed about J.A.R.V.I.S. taking it over."

Tony grinned. "I know, right?" He dropped the expression almost as quickly, focusing his mind. Concordia moved forward and past them, out through the main door.

"Are the Chitauri coming?" Bruce confirmed as they began walking towards the exit as well.

"In about an hour," Tony nodded and looked at the man. "If you would rather be somewhere else…"

"I've been fighting these things since day one," Bruce reminded him. "You of all people should remember that." The last remark was more biting that anything he had said to Tony since they were reunited.

It wasn't shame he felt, not really, but Tony didn't say anything else as he struggled to wade through the expanse of sand over to the Helicarrier.

Armed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents guarded the ship, which had already been hidden in the landscape by some of the wind-blown sand. Fury strode out as they approached and Thor dropped down from the sky, the gust blowing more of the fine sand everywhere. Tony blinked against it, annoyed, but chose not to comment. "The skies won't be friendly for much longer," he told the others.

"We're tracking enemy movement," Fury agreed. "We're prepared, but the area is too open to be properly defended – not to mention the Helicarrier."

"Leave that to me," Tony told him. "I'll take care of any ships that come within range; just handle the small stuff until I'm done with the big guns."

"I hope you have a plan," the Director told him sharply.

"Always do," Tony replied and turned back.

Steve met him half-way to the ship, shield in hand. Tony stopped and they stood still, tête-à-tête. It was hard to figure out what to say to a man you had first disliked, then threatened to kill, and who had, in the end, helped you to regain some control over your life. "Do you need help with anything?" Steve asked after a while. There was an earnest, open look on his face, like he would do almost anything Tony asked of him.

"I thought you were the face of justice," Tony mused after a bit.

"What?" Steve frowned.

"I mean," Tony fought to find the words to clarify what he felt, "you're the embodiment of good, of what is right. Don't tell me that was all propaganda: I fought with you, I know what I saw."

"Okay," Steve nodded uncertainly.

"Why are you here?" Tony gestured at the Afghan desert around them. "Why are you here, instead of trying to put the edge of your shield through my skull? I wouldn't appreciate you doing it, make no mistake, but I…" He halted, the truth a bit too much for him to handle, which was ridiculous since it was a path _he_ had _chosen_. There may have been some shoving-down-his-throat involved, but in the end it had been Tony's own embittered feelings that led them to this place.

"I'm responsible for the destruction of entire civilizations," Tony finally went on as Steve patiently waited for him to explain himself. "I've killed billions of people in only a few months. Not personally, but we both know who's responsible. Even if we wipe out the Chitauri today, it will take decades if not centuries for Mother Nature to heal the earth, radiation poisoning to fade and scars to heal. What Hitler did and tried to accomplish pales in comparison to what I've done, and yet, here you are. You haven't even punched me in the face. Why is that?"

Sand shifted behind Tony, flowing downhill and submerging his feet more deeply in it; Tony glanced briefly over his shoulder, seeing Bruce halt a few feet away but not intervening, sensing this was a somewhat private conversation.

Steve looked up at Bruce as well then returned his gaze to Tony. His eyes were sad, so very sad, and he raised one hand up to push back the cowl. "Because it's my fault," Steve replied, unhesitating. Tony frowned, opening his mouth to argue but Steve shook his head sharply. "I made the call. I left you on the other side of the portal. Whatever my mistakes, whatever their effect on how things unfolded… I've seen the signs of what they did to you, Tony, and while I'm certain you had your problems with the world, you didn't manage them like this. You took care of them by becoming Iron Man; by becoming a hero. That's the man I knew, and that's the man neither the Chitauri nor anyone else can ever take from you."

Tony blinked, feeling like someone had thrown a handful of sand in his eyes. The wind, probably, although the air was barely stirring around them at the moment, as if giving a dramatic pause to further emphasize the gravity of this discussion. "I think you're wrong," Tony replied in a quiet tone that lacked most of the confidence he wanted to display. "I think they took that man away, quite effectively."

"You say they broke you?" Bruce's voice interrupted and the man walked down the rest of the way, stopping on Tony's right side.

"They sure as hell didn't fix me," Tony narrowed his eyes.

"The fact that we're here," Steve cut in before they could go on, "proves to me that you survived. It may have taken you a while to find that spark again, to fight off the lies and their control over your mind, but I think Pepper knew, deep down… That's why she asked you to do what none of us dared to say out loud."

"You heard?" Tony frowned.

"I was told," Steve shrugged. "There were people in the shelter at that time and while some of us felt like we should trust you, not all agreed." Which was a kind way of saying Tony had been spied on the entire time he was held captive – or after he was rescued from the clutches of the Chitauri, whichever sounded better.

Tony looked down, his feet covered in the same sand he had hoped never to see again, but which had become all too familiar during his first years as Iron Man; he may have not returned here, directly, more than once, but the Middle East hadn't been a peacekeeper's paradise until he took care of it. Or tried: it was an endless swamp of fighting, whatever one tried to do to stop it.

That was before he had wiped it all out; the urban population, the hiding clans, everything. In the midst of all the horror the units and the Chitauri had caused, perhaps this was the best thing that had happened – even if scholars around the world would disagree; genocide rarely solved anything, but Tony guessed it at least stopped the fighting… until new people settled in and continued where the dead had left off.

He cleared his throat, returning to the present, not thinking of the mountains of bodies hidden beneath the sand and in ruins of cities. "It wasn't your fault," he finally told Steve, voice firm.

A weak smile pulled the blond's lips. "Say what you will, but I'll always feel responsible."

"Then you'll be happy to know I didn't die."

"No, you didn't die, but instead you came back and did this," Steve looked around and shrugged. "The team failed you that day in New York, but…" He hung his head for a moment and decided not to go on, shifting his shield instead. "What we do today is more important, right?" he asked as he looked up again. Tony felt like if he denied him, he might just give up and crumble, so Tony did no such thing:

"Yeah. Today we turn the tide of the war," Tony promised him and pulled his feet free of the sand. As he went past Steve, he clasped his shoulder firmly in passing. Tony didn't ask for them to follow, knowing both Steve and Bruce would trail him back to the space ship – where Thor had already joined Jane and Darcy with Clint and Natasha.

"Where did that one mecha go?" Clint asked as if suspecting a trap.

"If you can't see Concordia, then all is well," Tony mused. "Means the Chitauri won't be able to see it either until it's too late."

Clint looked like he might argue but decided to say nothing. Natasha leaned against his side, subtly but doing it anyway. Tony wondered if it had always been there but he hadn't got to see it. Clint look at her, nodded, then looked away. Clearly they had decided on seeing this through and perhaps stab Tony in the back if it looked like he might be double-crossing them.

_"Sir,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke up, once again both vocally and in his head, _"the first of the Chitauri ships will be within range soon."_

"Roger that," Tony nodded.

"Range of what?" Bruce asked.

"Keep your pants on for now," Tony reassured him and couldn't resist a grin; he had seen so much more of the Hulk than he had ever hoped to during these past few months of battling. Bruce flushed, just slightly, and Steve shook his head in clear disapproval.

Returning his mind to the more pressing issue, Tony looked across the hallway to the circular room which was just within the range of his eyes. Opposite from the open door, Edwin stood in its nest, yet its eyes began to glow more brightly as Tony looked at it. The unit straightened itself slowly, stepping out, making an almost stretching motion; testing all of its components to make sure it was battle ready. Tony knew J.A.R.V.I.S. was running Edwin through all that, sending Tony appropriate data.

A faint roar approached them from across the sky, growing steadily louder. The ship's sensors registered it and gave Tony the exact time they had left before the Chitauri would be upon them.

The ship trembled as Edwin walked closer, stopping just a few feet away, towering over them. Tony looked up at it, smiling fondly. It was like seeing his firstborn walk for the first time, although this was going to be far more gruesome than that. Their eyes met, human retinas and glowing mechanism, just as their minds touched. Tony didn't need to say a word before Edwin moved out then began climbing, making its way on top of the ship where it straightened and stood like the king of a mountain, ready to challenge any who dared to oppose him.

Tony wanted to see this with his own eyes so he stepped back out to the world of sand and devastation, watching as the arc reactor burned brighter in the unit's chest, visible and more like his own than what the other units carried inside them.

A shadow began to wedge itself between them and the sun; a Chitauri ship came into view, creating a sandstorm beneath it.

Edwin's skin lit up in response, intricate lines focusing on its chest and arms while traveling all over its body. Where the others had been given brute strength, stamina and durability, Edwin represented a side of Tony's life which had changed him forever.

One mechanical hand rose to the air, palm forward, aiming at the Chitauri ship. The lines of energy concentrated and released a blast so bright it almost blinded Tony, yet he looked at its brilliance as it cut through the air and crashed into the space ship, tearing through its hull and triggering an explosion within the ship.

"Yeah!" Tony grinned, feeling the same, insane delight twisting inside him as when he flew the Iron Man suit for the first time.

The Chitauri ship began to sink and finally hit a sandy ridge, slipping down, crushing a small mountain beneath it.

"Repulsor rays. Really?" Natasha huffed from the side, unimpressed.

Tony turned to look at her. "Not exactly, seeing as the materials available to me differed from those I was used to. However, the effect is… quite impressive."

"Why didn't you arm the other mecha with these?" Clint asked.

"Because that would have been… too close to home," Tony shrugged.

"I think the surface charge was almost worse, seeing as they could direct it," Steve noted.

Tony agreed and that's why he had chosen it. He could have installed a thousand weapons inside the mecha but going with basic options made them more compact and more effective. When you focused on the right things, it didn't take much to defeat an army of humans – an army which Tony had helped to weaponize in the past.

Two more Chitauri ships were drifting into view, breaking through the clouds. Tony sensed their weapons and told Edwin to fire at them both, although it would only wound them when it wasn't a concentrated blast. The unit did just that in perfect synch with his mind, the ships losing altitude and opening the hangar doors to let their forces out to join the battle.

"Okay, this is where you step in," Tony informed the others. "Good luck."

"Whatever," Clint muttered and took off with Natasha.

"They will be safe here?" Thor asked him, looking at Jane and Darcy who still stood by the ship's entrance.

"Yes, just tell them to go inside," Tony nodded.

Thor returned to the women, receiving a firm, prolonged embrace from Jane before he could draw back and take to the sky, no doubt to join the other Asgardians and seek the heat of the battle alongside them. Tony had witnessed their destructive force and knew that against the Chitauri, without his units in the way, they would wreak havoc today.

Yet another Chitauri ship arrived and Tony gave Concordia the green light; the unit emerged from the sand, rising tall close to where the Helicarrier was parked and which the newest Chitauri ship may have been targeting. While rivers of sand, earth and stone still ran down its body, Concordia braced itself, jumped on top of the Helicarrier and then took the final leap, grasping onto the ship much the same way as in their last battle. The Chitauri fired, releasing their soldiers, but it was too late. Once Concordia had a firm hold, the ship was going down, no matter how much the Chitauri struggled.

Edwin, sensing a tide turning, abandoned its post on top of the ship and ran across the sand. Its sleek, massive body moved effortlessly, regardless of the gravity or the mass it had to carry, eloquent in its every move. It approached the damaged ships that still clung to the air, fighting to stay afloat. Edwin didn't even stop before it shot at them again, bringing them down to the ground with a ear-splitting crash and series of explosions. To finish the job, the unit moved to the nearest ship, bracing for impact and then smashing its giant hand through the hull and pulled out parts and machinery like the roots of malicious weeds.

Tony was so mesmerized by it all he didn't really notice the other Avengers leaving his side to join in the effort of taking down the Chitauri who survived the wrath of the units. The air flashed with shots, explosions and gunfire following suit. It didn't sound like the humans were losing but once the Chitauri ships had been completely eliminated, which took roughly twenty minutes, the units moved to kill the surviving Chitauri, thus speeding up the victory.

Smoke rose towards the skies in pillars, fires burning in the heat of the desert.

The cries, yells and screeches died down.

Once it was over, Edwin and Concordia returned to the repair ship, walking inside. Others followed more slowly; Steve's current uniform was torn and burnt in places but he appeared fine save for a small limp. Bruce hadn't found it necessary to transform and let the Hulk out, although there were smears of blood on his clothes – perhaps from helping others. Rhodey followed soon after them, a gash on his forehead which reminded Tony of the fact he didn't have the War Machine suit anymore.

"That was easy," Rhodey noted, a rough edge in his words but he appeared satisfied.

"Better late than never," Bruce agreed.

The air stirred and Thor landed beside them, appearing unhurt although somewhat dirtied. Jane and Darcy rushed out to greet him, both grinning widely and cheering the victors.

_"Sir,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S. piped up, _"the Chitauri forces have been informed of their defeat here."_

"Let them shake in fear!" Thor raised his hammer in a sign that he was in a good mood and the victory had lifted up his spirits once more.

Tony, however, knew that they needed to do more than simply expect the Chitauri to swallow this. "Do we still have access?" Tony asked while checking in with the ship's log.

_"We do, sir, although I suggest we move quickly before the window of opportunity closes; they know of your conversion and will grow wary."_

"Execute the sub-programming," Tony nodded in agreement. "Let's slow them down a little."

_"Very well, sir. Accessing extension pack indexed as 'Chitauri Apocalypse'. Extracting files… Beginning remote installation… Installation complete, full access granted; reboot pending."_ A slight pause followed. _"Necessary system functions rebooted and calibrating."_ Another pause. _"Calibration complete. Connecting Edwin unit to begin infiltration. Access to the mainframe granted. The program is operational, sir, and the ship systems are beginning to deteriorate."_

"Which ship systems?" Bruce's head jerked in alarm.

Tony smiled darkly. "I may have designed a small bug to attack some of the base programming of the Chitauri fleet. It might not kill them all, but it will paralyze most of their functions and potentially crash many of their ships."

"And they just let you do that right under their noses?" Rhodey asked.

Tony shrugged. "I've never trusted most people that should have earned it – and I certainly felt no love for the Chituari. As soon as I had the freedom, I ensured I had some semblance of control, should I one day feel the need to bring them down – whether we were in middle of space or actually back on Earth."

He thought back to the moment when he realized it had to be done, on one of those dark days when it felt like his brain had just been sliced in two and his thoughts could barely form a coherent sentence.

"I hid the key components within Edwin since I always pretended that unit was a faulty one, never to be used but more like a… token of my success with the creation of others more advanced than Edwin. If I could have pulled off an actual self-destruct code, I probably would have used that, but with two minds linked to my own it would have been too complex and dangerous." He had rarely feared being caught doing something forbidden, but in this case he had to play his part, to not expose the silent rebellion still existing because if The Engineer got wind of it, Tony would have been back on the examination table and the pain was still too fresh for him to want to repeat that ever again.

He looked up as Fury made his way over to them, flanked by a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. For a guy who had looked like a storm cloud for the past few days, it was as if the skies had suddenly turned sunny and pleasant. "Good work," he praised, not saying it directly in Tony's face but he knew what the Director meant.

"Tony just evened out the battle-field by disabling some of the Chitauri ships around the globe," Steve revealed the latest turn of events, clearly feeling like he had to promote that in case Fury found something to complain about.

A raised eyebrow met that statement and Tony exchanged a quick look with Fury. "What happens next?" the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. asked then, taking it all in stride.

"J.A.R.V.I.S., activate the rest of the units," Tony called out.

_"Do you wish to give them a directive?"_ the AI asked. In the back of his mind, Tony could feel his creations coming online.

"They'll know what to do," Tony responded. "They know who the enemy is." His eyes met Fury's again, then gazed at the others. "There's something I want to make very clear now, to you and the rest of humanity: the units – the mecha – are off limits from now on. They are not to be harmed."

"I can't make promises for the remaining branches of government around the world," Fury said at once.

Tony narrowed his eyes. "You don't want to go down that road, Director; you've already seen what happens."

"Those things –"

"Are my babies," Tony snapped. "I created them and have an emotional bond with each and every one of them. Their minds are linked to mine. You hurt them, you hurt me, and they won't respond well to that – nor will I. That's the only thing we have to agree on."

"Then we're in agreement," Steve responded before Fury could come up with another argument. "We couldn't destroy them before and we aren't starting now. Since they pose no more threat to humanity, we shall regard them as our allies."

Fury didn't look happy, although Tony suspected it had to do with a shit-storm he was going to receive once whoever was left in the chain of command heard about this. Steve was hitting the nail on the head, however, on the fact that humanity hadn't found a weapon against the units until now, and they weren't going to, either.

"This is how we'll win the war," Steve went on. "By taking the enemy's weapon and turning it against them. That's all the public has to know." His eyes found Tony's. "That's all anyone ever has to know."

It was perhaps his way of saying that the world would never know their celebrated superhero had turned on them.

Tony wasn't so certain it was sand in his eyes this time and he quickly looked away, forcing himself to focus on the events that were going to unfold across the globe now that he had declared war on the Chitauri.

He knew it was far from over but he would finish it, one way or another.

_to be continued…_


	30. Chapter 29: Iron Man Returns

**Chapter 29: Iron Man Returns**

* * *

Whatever Tony had done to the Chitauri ships, it worked. Many of them simply fell from the sky while others struggled to regain control. It bought them time to safely return back to the U.S. – along with the space ship Tony had lifted from the sands of the Afghan desert.

The Avengers and their closest friends and allies had opted to travel with Tony. They were joined by a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who were perhaps meant to control the situation should Tony change his mind about helping them, but what were they going to do if even one of the mecha on the space ship was activated? Maybe that was why the agents sat together to one side, as invisible as they could be.

Tony had personally asked Rhodey to join him for the duration of the trip – and he had also had them haul War Machine's armor over. Rhodey hadn't dared to get his hopes up at that point but once they were in the air and it seemed either the ship or J.A.R.V.I.S. was taking care of the flying, Tony set up a shop in the middle of the ship and started taking War Machine apart.

Rhodey circled close by as he worked, the others watching from the side, conversing in quiet voices.

Piece by piece the armor was undone, inspected and put aside. Rhodey feared it would be just a pile of components once Tony was done with it, making it impossible for anyone to re-create the armor, but eventually Tony started putting pieces back together, the project taking a familiar shape once more.

"Here we go," Tony nodded to himself after a moment, holding War Machine's helmet in his hands. "J.A.R.V.I.S., did you upload the new combat database upgrades?"

_"Indeed I did, sir,"_ the AI responded. It was the first thing they had said anything outloud to each other in what seemed like a day, which was weird, but Rhodey had by now accepted that somehow Tony had wired J.A.R.V.I.S. into his brain, just like he was connected to the mecha; they must have been talking all this time, just not out loud.

"There it is," Tony murmured softly, narrowing his eyes slightly as if looking at something only he could see. That went on for a while before his eyes were directed at Rhodey. "Alright, I need you to suit up for a test run."

"It's working?" Rhodey asked with some apprehension.

"You think I would ask you to put it on if it wasn't?" Tony shot back as if there was only one answer to that.

Rhodey smiled and walked over.

To feel War Machine tight around his body once more was the closest thing to home he had left. Tony moved around him, tightening bolts, helping the process they didn't have machinery for. They had never done this before; Rhodey had taken his suit without Tony's actual consent, years ago, and Tony had barely touched it since. It was strange how the armor had never gotten a chance to bring them together, other than in battle.

"How's it feel?" Tony asked after Rhodey had taken a few tentative steps, moving his arms and finding that the armor hadn't functioned so well in a long time, perhaps ever.

"It's good," he admitted.

Tony huffed as if he knew what Rhodey was really thinking, moving low and making a few more adjustments. "Battle-ready," he mused then, stepping back and looking at him.

"Thanks," Rhodey responded. It was easy to stay in this moment and revel in how uncomplicated it was. Tony wasn't trying to kill them or crush him inside the suit. He was back on their side, the right side, and whatever had brought that change around, eventually… Rhodey wasn't certain he cared. As long as Tony's alliance stayed with them, instead of going another 180 degrees…

"Looks good," Steve Rogers commented, walking closer.

Rhodey nodded.

"Go for a test flight," Tony suggested. "You should have enough room to maneuver inside the ship."

That was Rhodey's cue to leave and he took it, walking a safe distance from the others before starting the repulsors and taking off. He weaved across giant hallways, feeling an unstoppable dread rise in his throat as he entered the huge, circular space in the heart of the ship where the mecha rested in their nests. They paid him no mind as he flew by – another testament to Tony's willingness to help them.

Rhodey wasn't stupid: he had seen the mecha out there in Afghanistan and how easily they took down Chitauri ships. However, Tony hadn't given the Chitauri a chance to return fire, which meant he was either avoiding confrontation of that kind or wasn't in a mood to toy with his prey. Whatever the reason, the Chitauri knew where he stood now and if Rhodey had understood correctly, the mecha were currently engaging the Chitauri around the globe. However, the most decisive battle would take place wherever Tony decided to stop and make his stand, and that's where Rhodey would be, too.

* * *

"It was nice of you to fix Rhodey's suit," Steve said after War Machine left for a test flight.

Tony hummed some kind of response, putting away his tools and extra pieces of metal and wiring. "Technically, it's my suit, so… And I was the one who broke it. Not that there was much to break; what were your engineers doing to my creation?" he asked, sounding offended.

Steve tried to find a comeback that wouldn't insult him but Tony broke into a small grin before he could form a reply.

"Come now, Cap. I know what…" He didn't finish but there were only so many things he could have said. It had been his fault they had been struggling to arm their soldiers. That was the easy, over-simplified version of the truth but Steve had thought it over so many times he skipped it this time around.

"Do you have a plan?" Steve asked instead, knowing they were moving according to Tony's terms right now. They couldn't afford to lose him – physically or emotionally. They had all seen what happened at that point.

Tony looked at him, a conflicted look on his face. Part of him appeared almost angry, amused – and the rest seemed thoughtful. No doubt a 'man with a plan' comment was on his lips but Tony, surprisingly, didn't run with it. "Sort of."

"Care to elaborate?" Steve prodded.

Tony focused on his tools for a bit longer, then stood up and motioned for Steve to follow. They entered a room off to one side, not smaller since nothing on this ship seemed inaccessible to the mecha, but definitely cramped compared to the others. "J.A.R.V.I.S., bring it up," Tony ordered into thin air and the floor opened, a portion of it rising as pieces shifted around.

_"The suit is complete, sir,"_ the AI's voice echoed around them.

Steve watched as the mechanical pieces revealed something that made his throat go dry with sudden emotion. The colors were wrong – the red replaced by black – the gold appearing brighter in comparison. The arc reactor and eyes glowed at them as Iron Man stood tall on the dais. Steve hadn't thought it would actually hit him that hard, if this day ever came, and he was glad for all the small changes because it didn't take him right back to the battle in New York City.

Tony seemed equally speechless, which was strange. Steve looked at him, watching the other man watch the suit of armor, and the conflicted emotions were certainly back on Tony's face.

"Put it on," Steve suddenly said, as if there was some doubt that Tony might not do it.

The brown eyes were wide and shining with extra wetness as they met his gaze; open and vulnerable in a way Steve had seen him only a few times – all of those involving extreme pain or being under another's control. This time, however, it was pure emotion. The look didn't last, of course. Tony pulled the mask back on, untraceable if you hadn't seen him just seconds ago, uncertainty replaced by determination. "I will," he promised.

Steve knew that if his own reaction had been this, it was nothing compared to what the others would feel. To see Iron Man fly once more, battling the Earth's enemies… It was the final push they needed. Even those who knew what Tony had been up to would feel that same rush of emotion Steve had experienced, he was certain of it.

Tony was looking at the suit again, head slightly cocked in thought. The armor appeared to be looking back, making the moment just as intimate as it probably was. Steve had a feeling Tony hadn't put it on yet. Not after all he had done, all that he had become. But Earth needed its heroes to defend her and once you stepped down that path, you inevitably followed it to the very end, regardless of misdeeds and bad choices.

"I'll be honored to stand beside you again," Steve said, meaning every word.

"Likewise, Captain," Tony replied, and there was zero mockery in his tone; no nicknames, no jokes.

Tony meant it.

* * *

Clint could admit the mecha provided an amazing vantage point. Perched on one's shoulder, Clint had already learned its movements and could look for a target without fear of falling off. Certainly this wasn't one of the large ones – Concordia and Edwin were too powerful and valuable to restrain their full potential – but Clint felt like he was able to touch the clouds as they moved between partially destroyed buildings of the city of Los Angeles.

Stark had taken them back towards the West Coast, seeing as there were no civilians there and the Chitauri forces would follow him like a magnet, pulled to whatever location Stark chose for the final blow-out.

That Clint had been offered to hitch a ride on an enormous robot had come as a surprise. He had been this close to a mecha only a handful of times, all of them life-or-death situations. He tried to ignore the natural rise in his pulse and bravely accepted the higher ground, unwilling to display cowardice in front of the mecha or its creator.

Now that he was getting used to its movements, didn't need to watch for the deadly current or plan how to put out the mechanical eyes, he rather liked it.

Chitauri forces were slowly trickling in. Ships could be easily spotted in the sky but they hung back at a smart distance from the mecha; Edwin had already shot one down and grazed another. The damaged ship had soon vanished from the skyline, possibly to try landing before it crashed.

Clint had never seen so many mecha in one place. He had no idea what kind of homing beacon they had but it definitely worked. A few of them clung onto high-rise buildings like King Kongs, eyes searching the scenery, possibly reporting back their findings. To not be here to fight them was a relief and sent another kind of tremor through Clint; had the beginning been like this, they would have won the war in a week, he was sure of that.

The mecha shifted, turning a corner, and Clint's eyes found a brief reflection of light on the ground; Cap was there, in full armor, shield catching the sun. The mecha bowed down suddenly, one arm stretched out; Clint found his balance quickly and watched as one hand, palm up, almost touched the ground and Captain America hopped up, running along the arm as the mecha straightened again and continued on.

Cap reached the other shoulder and nodded at Clint. If he wanted a report, he could have just used the comm, but he was probably seeking a small breather from the preparations on the ground; there were so few of them left it was ridiculous but the Avengers had defeated the Chitauri once, and they would do so again.

"Is he armored up yet?" Clint asked, raising his voice for it to carry over the small distance and the sound of massive feet hitting the street. He had seen Stark's new suit briefly before they left the ship; he couldn't wait to see the looks on people's faces when he finally decided to fly in and join the action, no doubt showboating the entire way.

"Not yet," Cap replied, sounding thoughtful.

"Well, he's gonna miss the show if he dallies a bit longer," Clint pointed out, gazing at the changing scenery. Leveled buildings, crushed cars, small craters from explosions… Not a soul had been here for a long time.

They passed another block and suddenly a swarm of small Chitauri aircrafts flew past them, making the mecha whip around and snarl at them. Clint was already fitting an arrow to his bow and released it once he was in position, blowing up one of the vehicles and sending it careening down to the ground, driver, passengers and all.

"It's starting," Cap said into the comm to notify those who couldn't see the fireworks of the small explosion.

War Machine flew in through a hole in a nearby building, turning sharply and going after the flying Chitauri. A few blocks down, Concordia smashed its way through another building, glass and concrete raining down long after the mecha was already gone, chasing an enemy Clint couldn't see from this distance.

The calm before the storm had passed: Chitauri forces pushed in on them from all sides. The Hulk roared in the distance, lightning struck down and Clint caught a brief glimpse of the Asgardians grouped together, doing their damnedest to prove each and every legend with their name attached to them true. Clint wished he could have stayed to watch a little longer, to take satisfaction in the fact that the Chitauri didn't stand a chance against them, but his ride was moving along, craning its neck to check another street before making a turn in the opposite direction.

Cap decided that was as far as he was going to go and slid down one mechanical arm, swinging himself into a partially collapsed building from which he could make his way to the ground. Clint didn't worry whether he made it or not, knowing that something as insignificant as a collapsed building wouldn't stop their leader now that they were finally getting a taste of victory.

Larger aircraft began nearing the battle, bringing more firepower and soldiers to the aid of the Chitauri. Clint was looking at the one closest to him, wondering if he would be able to find a weakness to exploit, when the mecha suddenly stopped as if to reconsider the situation. A sound cut through the air behind Clint and he whipped his head around just in time to see a black-and-gold shape fly past them, rattling broken windows.

A belated cheer broke out somewhere on the ground and the Chitauri ships began to make a beeline towards Iron Man.

Clint smiled and tapped the mecha with his foot. "Let's go and join the action. I have arrows that are looking for a new home."

The mecha let out a sharp, metallic growl and started running. Clint crouched low, grinning, clouds of dust rising from where he had last seen Iron Man heading. It was clear Stark was already at work. "About time," he muttered, sliding one arrow free to ease the anxiety in his stomach.

* * *

Tony hadn't thought putting on the suit would be so hard.

The new design had been created bearing in mind the changes to his physiology; it was slightly thicker to accommodate the harness but not giving anyone a hint it was actually there. To the untrained eye, it was simply bulkier. Tony, however, saw every minor change and knew why they were there.

_"Sir,"_ J.A.R.V.I.S. prompted him, in his head and outside it at the same time, in perfect synch, the AI knowing it was the best way to gain his attention. It was something else to get used to. _"Chitauri ships have come to a halt, a safe distance from the battle. They will deploy soldiers soon."_

Tony nodded. It was time. Not that he would make a difference by being there; he knew how capable the units would be to dispatch his tormentors, grinding them to dust beneath their feet. However, his team was out there…

The Avengers.

Rhodey.

Part of his mind still clung to half-lies and insecurities about how he _wasn't_ an Avenger – that he had been the last resort for Fury, another piece in the puzzle; another puppet. He had played his part beautifully, and now he was coming back for seconds at a table that wasn't set for him.

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The others were waiting.

Steve had given him a final look and a firm nod, like he believed in Tony and as if the arguments of their first meeting didn't exist; Bruce had pulled him aside briefly and of all things imaginable that he might say or do, he had hugged Tony tight, his arms never re-adjusting when he had to rest them across the harness; Rhodey had asked him to check the War Machine one more time, which was his way of being close to Tony when it counted; Natasha hadn't said much, but she definitely smiled when Thor had clasped Tony's shoulder hard enough to bruise; Clint had looked at him like Tony was mad when he offered him a ride on one of the units, yet the excitement on his face was clear when he saw the heights it took him to.

They were all out there, knowing he had a suit and that he would put it on.

Tony opened his eyes and nodded. The armor began to disassemble in front of him, long enough that he had time to step over to the carefully calculated spot from where it could build itself up again, around him. It reminded him of the last time he had been inside the armor – had been Iron Man. The hours of horror, blood in his throat, lungs still burning while his skin blazed with agony. The Chitauri had stripped him of his armor but they sure as hell wouldn't stop him from putting it back on.

That choice was Tony's, and Tony's alone.

In the back of his mind he still recalled the cries and screams of the small unit he had designed and worn like a suit, mimicking Iron Man yet unprepared to take the last step; the small unit had been alien enough to lull him into thinking that he was no longer the same person he used to be…

The Chitauri, once certain of his betrayal, had caught the small unit and torn it apart. It had still been damaged from the battle – the same one that put Tony in the stasis tank – and thus unable to save itself. Tony would avenge it and show the aliens that even if they destroyed one, they had barely scratched the surface of how many they would have to kill to take care of the rest.

Darkness briefly swallowed Tony as the helmet settled in place. Light came on a fraction of a second later, HUD lighting up, more complex than it had ever been yet his brain registered every bit of it.

The first step in the new suit was much like the first he had ever taken while wearing the armor. Another world opened up to him as his mind expanded, yet this time it did so literally, linking with the suit, with his AI, the units and the raging battle outside. It took him a moment to adjust and not be overwhelmed by all the data coming in. Tony had grown accustomed to this when the units, his babies, were in his head, and this wasn't so different.

J.A.R.V.I.S. was silent and all actual audio died around him, enclosing him in silence that reminded him of the cold calm of space. He wasn't drifting powerlessly this time, however; he felt the suit come to life at the command of his mind, a mere thought starting ignition. The doors opened and he soared up into the sky, not thinking twice as he left the protective ship behind and flew into the midst of buildings.

Chitauri forces were being deployed in numbers that had been able to stop human armies. However, all bets were off this time and the Avengers weren't holding back. Tony's mind's eye tracked the Hulk's destructive path, Thor and his Asgardians taking down one Chitauri after another, tirelessly and with vengeance. Black Widow was more silent, moving in the shadows with a few capable agents, setting traps and attacking without remorse.

The units were engaging all around him, some of them waiting for an opening, to see if the big ships would dare to come closer after Edwin's last attack, the others tearing into smaller aircrafts, smashing them against buildings and leaping after them as the Chitauri tried to speed out of range.

Tony caught sight of War Machine on his screen and took a few turns to find him and join his efforts to clear the air. Repulsor blasts thinned the crowd nicely, at least for the time being, and Rhodey stopped to hover in the air, looking at Tony. "Looking good, man," he noted.

Tony chuckled and got ready to throw back a comeback when the alarms flared and he ducked just in time to avoid a missile. It blasted the building behind him, sending it crashing down, but Tony paid it no mind: his eyes were trained on a Chitauri ship that was boldly lowering itself from the clouds, hovering over the city.

"You're gonna go for it, aren't you?" Rhodey asked needlessly.

"Yup," Tony confirmed. Somewhere on that ship, he knew it for certain, lurked someone he wanted to get his hands on.

"Do you need help with that?" Rhodey went on, offering help.

"I'll be fine. I've done this before, after all," he mused dryly.

"Yeah, with a nuke," Rhodey shot right back at him. "Let me come with you."

Tony sighed. "Fine, but if you get squashed like a bug when that thing falls, it's your own damn fault."

"I can live with that."

Tony felt like pointing out that might not happen but shot up instead, arms raised, weapons hot, shooting back at the ship. War Machine flew after him, raining destruction on the ship and Tony focused at the same spot, knowing that after piercing the hull they would be one step closer to their goal. As they got closer, however, Tony saw they weren't doing enough damage and dodged to the side to avoid smashing into the ship, War Machine following close by, still shooting.

Lightning cracked and suddenly something shot through the air, smashing into the side of the space ship, making the metal bend briefly before it cracked and broke under the pressure and Tony veered back to check it out.

Mjolnir came crashing back though the hole as Tony moved past it, almost taking him out. He swung around in mid-air to look at Thor approaching, cape billowing in the wind, hair wild. "Friend Tony," he nodded his head and stopped. "Shall we pay them a visit?"

Tony guessed that since Thor had opened a door for them, he couldn't tell him no. Signaling the units to compensate for Thor's absence on the ground, he nodded and made for the hole, firing at it, making it larger to let them through.

Thor and War Machine were right behind him as they entered the ship. It was dark and quiet compared to the outside – _too_ dark and quiet. Tony floated in the air while the other two settled down on the floor, scanning the area. A hissing sound filled the space as air pushed in to replace whatever was leaking out – Tony never had figured out what it was the Chitauri breathed, the memory of discovering it wasn't oxygen still making his throat ache.

"It's quiet in here," Rhodey was the first to speak.

"A trap, perhaps?" Thor mused, already shifting his hammer, clearly not bothered by the idea of walking into one.

Tony moved his feet, just slightly, floating to the side along the dark space. He heard the other two follow, Thor's boots and War Machine's heavy footsteps echoing off the walls around them.

"I don't like this," Rhodey complained.

"You know where the door is," Tony replied. He knew their approach and entrance could have not gone unnoticed. It was only a matter of time –

Tony's ears barely registered the sound before it felt like his skull was exploding and he fell to the floor, landing painfully on his knees even in the suit, attempting to cover his ears through the helmet. He tasted blood and the piercing sound kept on going and going, steadily making him want to vomit and scream, of which he did the latter.

Some part of his mind registered the sounds of battle that started around him; doors and hatches opening, Chitauri swarming in; Rhodey engaging them; Thor's battle cry; the sound of Mjolnir striking armored bodies… It was all like a faint whisper, an annoying tinnitus barely pushing through the agonizing, continuous wail.

Tony struggled to remove the helmet, his covered fingers clumsy even without the shaking that had taken over. Finally the clasps opened and he tasted the different air, the sound slowly fading and leaving only a throbbing the size of his head.

He groaned – then inhaled sharply as pain stabbed into his neck, thrusting in and foreshadowing the thoughts that assaulted his mind, drowning him, making his body tense and go slack at the same time. He wanted to fight and curl up, strike out and submit. It made no sense. He blinked, his eyesight distorted as if he were looking at two things at the same time.

"You thought you were so clever, Tony," a familiar, hissing voice caressed his ears. The Engineer's will pressed upon his own, to force him down, to make him stop fighting. "Resistance is futile: your mind belongs to me –"

There was a crunch, something warm dripping down on the back of Tony's head and the mind of the Chitauri disappeared like smoke in the wind. A painful drag followed as the spike slid out of the harness and Tony lifted his face just in time to see The Engineer's head being crushed in the gauntleted grip of the War Machine, which was the only thing keeping the body from slumping down.

"Tony!" Rhodey called out too loudly, making Tony's ears ring. "Can you breathe? Put the helmet back on; I think the air here is poisonous."

Tony closed his eyes and laughed. "It's okay…" he managed after a moment, looking up again. Rhodey had let the dead Chitauri fall, looking at him with those glowing red eyes. Tony's mind tapped into the inside cameras of the HUD and saw the concerned features of the man encased in the suit. "Thanks," he finally murmured, lowering his head, stretching his neck, wishing the pain would disappear faster.

Thor's familiar gait neared them and a hand settled on his shoulder. Tony felt the pressure although not as keenly as without the armor. "Are you injured? We saw you fall before the Chitauri stormed us."

"Give me a moment," Tony asked, not weakly but wanting to ground himself, to make sure his thoughts were still his own. Eventually he reached for the helmet again and put it back on, hearing it lock into place. Something wet and warm was making its way down the side of his neck – either his own blood or that of The Engineer. "Let's go," Tony announced as he raised himself up, Thor's hand still on his shoulder. "We have a ship to sink."

Rhodey chuckled and aimed at the nearest wall, blasting at it without remorse. After a shared look, Tony and Thor joined him with new gusto.

* * *

It was slow going but Steve was convinced they were going to win this.

Iron Man had flown by, drawing gazes just like back in the day, and that was all it took for the men and women to find a little bit of new spirit. Most of them would assume someone had just donned another one of Stark's suits but if they believed there was a hero inside… that it took a hero to wear one…

He had joined the Warriors Three, Lady Sif and Loki in battle when Thor had taken to the skies and hadn't returned. Steve wasn't concerned about that. Not only was he confident that Thor could handle himself, but he'd also noted the Chitauri ship floating over the city which was now smoking in places.

Volstagg sent three more Chitauri flying with a mighty bellow while Sif dodged a shot, blocked another with her shield and then moved within striking distance with her sword. Her every movement was elegant and had Steve not been hard-pressed to mind his own business – and fight – he would have gladly watched her. Not that Hogun or Fandral were left in the shadows either, Hogun a silent advocate of death and Fandral showing much of the same flourish that Tony had about him.

Loki, on the other hand, didn't appear to be enjoying himself. His magic was as potent as ever but he didn't seem comfortable attacking the enemy head-on like the others did. Steve understood that not everyone fought the same way and that hiding and striking was Loki's way. He was also still recovering from the injuries he had sustained during his captivity, which made Steve bite back any remarks and fight twice as hard to pick up the slack. Not that there was much he needed to do because even when injured and avoiding direct confrontation, Loki had certainly earned his place beside the other Asgardian warriors.

A mecha came crashing onto the scene from another street, striding over and past them, crushing several Chitauri beneath its foot but miraculously missing all of its allies. Or perhaps it was deliberate, Steve might have to ask Tony about that.

During the fight he had noted that whatever the mecha were made of, Chitauri weapons worked on them better than anything the humans had tried. Not well enough to stop the machines, however, and if the Chitauri didn't go running for their lives they got crushed, sooner or later, the mecha tirelessly pursuing their new enemies. Steve had been in the Chitauri's place not too long ago, yet he felt little pity for them: they had used Tony, torturing him and bending him to their will; they had come back here, waging war.

It was justice to see them fall beneath their own weapons, quite literally.

_"Concordia is crushing the opposition at the south end of the city, moving north,"_ Fury's voice informed anyone who was still listening to the comm signal.

Steve smiled briefly before dodging another blow and returning one of his own with the shield, then sent it flying to take out a Chitauri sneaking up on Hogun. The Asgardian thanked him with a firm nod and went on about his business while Steve retrieved his shield, checked the gun he was carrying and pushed at the lingering enemies once more.

They were going to win this.

* * *

**Two weeks later**

"Sir, the last ships are lifting off from the atmosphere," Benjamin Pollack noted from the main screen. "That's five altogether, heading away from us. It doesn't look like they're going to hang around." The man grinned, relief showing on his tired face.

Nick Fury couldn't but echo the expression while relief flooded him. The last two weeks had been filled with non-stop battles, more ferocious than any he had seen before. The remaining soldiers had eventually fallen back as the mecha continued on, followed by the Avengers and the Asgardians; it seemed that even when Stark had the situation well in hand, they refused to sit on the sidelines and cheer.

They were going to finish this, once and for all – as a team.

Five space ships had managed to elude the mecha. Only those five limped out of the arena of destruction while countless others lay in smoke and ruin, just like the Earth around them.

Fury was feeling positive, however; the surviving humans would re-build their world, their culture, their lives. They had faced the apocalypse and survived. The coming years, even decades, would be incredibly hard, but they would make it for the sake of all those they had lost.

Giving Pollack a brief pat on the back, he moved off the bridge and to the lower level where the weary warriors were getting some much-needed rest. However, it didn't come as a surprise that Stark was standing at a window, looking out at the sky – or that Banner was sitting against the wall beside him, too tired to stand but unwilling to rest either. He looked peaceful, as much as a man like him could, his eyes meeting Fury's before he looked at nothing in particular once more.

Footsteps neared and Fury halted to see what would unfold: Rogers approached, looking tired yet content, walking over to Stark and stopping beside him. They stood there, silent and still, until it seemed Stark leaned to the side, just slightly, and Rogers lifted one arm in a loose embrace. Silence stretched around them until Banner suddenly rose, a soft smile on his face, and Fury gazed at the dim reflection of the three of them in the window. Stark's features were relaxed and peaceful, eyes closed; he had clearly fallen asleep against Rogers. The two Avengers shared a silent look before Rogers carefully shifted his hold and lifted Stark into his arms, no doubt very similar to the day they had saved him from the Chitauri.

"Sir," Rogers nodded his head at Fury, inclining he knew the man was there, then continued on to one of the nearby cabins.

Banner stopped for a moment, looking after the two before facing Fury. "Did you need something?"

"Just to tell you that the remaining Chitauri ships have hightailed it off the planet," Fury informed the scientist.

"We knew that, but thanks," Banner nodded.

"How is he?" Fury asked next, thinking back to the small display of trust between Rogers and Stark he'd just witnessed.

"Tony?" Bruce guessed. "He's… complicated." A sigh escaped his lips, shoulders slumping a bit more if that were possible. "He knows he's a war-criminal. Not that anyone else knows. Steve is adamant about keeping it that way: he absolutely refuses to let Tony say otherwise. Tony knows what he did, though, and nothing we say can change that. Especially when it comes time to put the world back together, it will glare at him face to face from dawn to dusk."

"I suppose that's all the punishment a man can take," Fury mused.

Banner gave him a surprised look. "You're letting him off the hook?"

Fury shrugged, looking out the window. "You win some, you lose some. I know we won because of him." Just like they would have lost beneath Stark's boot, eventually. He didn't like to think about it, so he looked ahead instead. "Get some sleep, Doctor," Fury said then and headed back to the bridge, to make sure the Chitauri didn't get any bright ideas about coming back. He doubted it, but one could never be too careful.

He heard a door close somewhere behind him and wondered if Banner would join Rogers and Stark, to seek comfort in numbers –something they had all grown so accustomed to during the past few months. Some habits died harder than others.

_to be continued…_


	31. Chapter 30: Epilogue

**Chapter 30: Epilogue**

* * *

**Malibu, CA**

It was windy enough to give the cemetery a forbidding feeling. There were piles upon piles of dead leaves where the recent storms had tossed them, covering graves, headstones and paths alike.

Tony couldn't have cared less. One site stood clear of nature's attempts to hide it; he had worked furiously for a couple of minutes to clean it of every leaf and twig. The headstones were new and tasteful, just how she would have liked…

His eyes traced the letters of the first stone, then the next. There was a place for a third further down the row but it had been dug out. Ripped out, to be exact, and blasted at until nothing remained but smoky pieces of stone; Tony wasn't dead anymore, empty grave or not, and he had taken some satisfaction in destroying the symbol of his demise before taking off the suit.

That satisfaction had lasted too short a time, in his opinion. Looking at the graves of Pepper and Happy, he felt empty inside. He knew it was because of him – as it may have been if things had played out differently, too. Had he dropped back through the portal, being Iron Man may have still led to this very same place.

'What ifs' were for suckers; Tony had no room for them in this chaos he had created and how much did two more deaths weigh on his shoulders?

A lot more than the millions of others, he had to admit.

A damn sight more.

"I'm sorry," he said, words caught in his throat, barely making it out. It was a start. He could come back when he had thought of something else; they wouldn't be going anywhere. They wouldn't come back like he had.

The rest of the team had come and gone, paying their respects in silence. Tony wasn't certain but he felt like Rhodey may have cried. He was no doubt a bad friend for not noticing but his head felt so full, he couldn't think of yet another person and their broken lives.

"Feeling sentimental?" Loki's voice interrupted his thoughts.

Tony felt the next gust of wind dig all the way to his core and looked briefly at the Asgardian. Just as fast his attention was directed back at the grave – a clear signal that he had no desire for the other's company.

Loki, as always, didn't pay attention to the needs of others. He remained silent for a suspiciously long time and Tony wondered if he was contemplating something that might desecrate Pepper and Happy's final resting place. Tony would tear the God of Lies limb from limb if he even twitched the wrong way.

"They think the war is over," Loki finally spoke up, a thoughtful look on his face.

"It is," Tony replied. "Unless you're thinking of starting another one." As he turned to look at Loki properly, he felt the units shift in the back of his mind, ready for action regardless of the damage he would have to fix in the near future.

Loki met his gaze, expression serious. A tinge of fear was apparent in the green eyes. "You know what I mean, Stark. You failed to kill The Other, who is now running away from the Earth – and you know it doesn't end with him."

Tony wanted to stare him down and tell him to shut up about things he knew nothing about, but he couldn't deny the truth. Whatever Loki knew, or thought he knew… whoever once gave him the scepter to wield the power of the Tesseract…

"Whatever happens, it won't happen today," Tony finally said.

"No," Loki agreed, "but tomorrow is awfully close, even for you mortals."

They ended up looking at the graves in mutual silence; all the words in the world wouldn't change what was to come, eventually.

Just… not today.

**The End**


End file.
